


Red (White & Blue)

by counteragent



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Blood Drinking, Blood Kink, Bucky and Peggy make Captain America possible, His body isn’t dead it just craves human cells, M/M, The serum turns Steve, Thrall - Freeform, What if everything good about Captain America came from something horrible, vampire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-29
Updated: 2015-07-29
Packaged: 2018-04-11 20:10:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4450562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/counteragent/pseuds/counteragent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I’m dangerous,” Steve said softly, because he couldn’t say, <i>I’m terrified</i>. He couldn’t say, <i>It’s killing me</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Red (White & Blue)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [monicawoe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/monicawoe/gifts).



> HUGE (*crazy* huge) beta thanks to Speranza! Thanks also to astolat and giandujakiss for your words of encouragement.

**_“Who’s strong and brave, here to save the American Way? \\\ Who vows to fight like a man for what’s right night and day?”_ ** ****

The girls were in top form tonight. Despite his nausea, Steve’s fingers itched to draw the sleek lines of their legs as they strutted and kicked. Their fluttering skirts contrasted against the smooth, strong muscles of their thighs. He’d never been much interested in what was between a dame’s legs, but that didn’t stop him from appreciating the view. Steve waited offstage for his cue, clutching one of the ropes in the wings for balance. He had a vague fear it would release some critical part of the scenery, or open the curtains wider to reveal him standing there. Barely standing there, anyway.

It was a hell of a flu. For months, Steve’s new body had seemed impervious—he’d been the solitary crewman left standing during the first and second USO stomach thing—but the last couple of days this bug had had his number. Advancing and receding, attacking for one, maybe two hours, then slipping away again.  Today had been worse. His mouth was a desert, dry as dust. His swallows were unoiled gears grinding.  And he was hot enough to be shivering, little tremors that ebbed and flowed, reaching a pitch and then subsiding, all the more strange for their impermanence.

**_Who will campaign door-to-door for America // Carry the flag shore to shore for America…_ **

But part of this war was his now, and he’d better go get it done. He’d muddled through years of pneumonia; he could sell some bonds. Steve stood up straight and strode out on stage.

The crowd was happy, almost wild, shouting and laughing. There were kids, and mothers, and older men who might have served in the Great War. They all smiled and waved. Steve wondered—and he promised himself he wouldn’t, but the lights were cruelly bright, and everyone was too loud—Steve wondered what Bucky would think of him now. Bucky with his draft card, and his brittle smiles every time Steve tried to enlist. Like Steve’s interest in following him to war was not only ridiculous but a personal affront.

Steve hit his mark, and the crowd was all too happy to cheer louder. _Wonder if it’s the tights or the ear-wings that does it_. Steve smiled—he’d learned how to do that, under any circumstance—and started his spiel. He let the script do its work, pulling him automatically through the lines and the actions and the waves like he was a big, shiny car being hauled through an automobile wash tunnel.  

“Series E Defense bonds. Each one you buy is a bullet in the barrel of your best guy’s gun.”

Steve cherished few hopes—but if he had one more wish, he wanted Bucky to tell him, in person, how stupid he looked. They were shipping out on Sunday, to entertain the troops in London and Italy. It could happen, and in moments of weakness Steve imagined it. Bucky looking him up and down with the utter disdain that only fondness could breed. Sometimes Steve’s daydreams took a turn, and he imagined Bucky seeing Steve made new, made beautiful, and Bucky doing something about it. Something impossible. Maybe he’d cup Steve’s shoulders with warm hands, maybe trace the cords of muscles in his neck with an open mouth. Maybe Bucky would mutter to himself, cursing Steve’s stupidity _you jerk, you donated yourself?_ even as he laughed into the hollow of Steve’s neck. Or maybe he would be quiet, silent—

The crowd was silent. Steve jerked back into the moment. The music was still going, the girls were starting up the final chorus, but there was something tinny about their singing—they’d gone nasal and too bright with the tone. Givens, his “Adolf”, wasn’t sneaking up like a rat, he was standing practically next to Steve with a placid expression. He was a waiter ready to take an order down. The people in their seats were quiet, politely waiting to clap.

Steve’s stomach cramped violently, and he doubled over. The largest tremor yet took hold, starting in his shoulders and shaking down to his knees. They buckled, and he went down hard.

 _I’m starving_ , Steve thought, and passed out.

-*-

Steve ran a rag across the shield, getting off the last bits of stubborn tomato. The rain outside the performers’ tent beat down steadily. The sound was the pounding of tiny fists, a miniature army banging to be let in. Luckily the tent had been pitched on a raised wooden platform; the rain soldiers seeped impotent beneath while the talent stayed dry. The tent was divided into a tiny “his” and larger “hers” by a portable cloth screen; Steve had all the privacy a scrap drop cloth could provide.

Steve was tempted to stew a little-- _where’d the guys get tomatoes in November? They must have been saving it special for something really horrible, like Captain America_ —but even he couldn’t help feeling like they’d let patriotic Tinker Bell off easy. He supposed he had the girls to thank for that.

He had a lot to thank the girls for. They made sure he got sent along when they shipped overseas to entertain the vegetable-hoarding troops, despite his spectacular fainting spell at the last stateside performance. The one no one could really remember. Steve had asked Givens about it— _do you know that you just stood there, waiting for a fat lip_ —and he’d nodded like someone appeasing their kid nephew. But the girls had vouched for his health with Arnie, the manager, and Steve had finally made it to the war.

He felt better and he didn’t. The tremors and nausea were gone, but he ached everywhere all the time. Like growth pains from his huge new bones and muscles were hitting him all at once. He was constantly parched. He drank all the water he could get--he’d have opened his mouth to the downpour outside, rain flowing in like a river, but water didn’t help. He was wrung out.

Steve heard a woman sniffling, followed by a muted sob. It could have been going on for a while, the sound mingling with the rain.

“Hey,” he called softly, through the screen. “You okay?”

The sobbing only grew more constant; like the crier had given up hiding it. Steve cautiously stood and edged around the screen.

Debbie was seated on the second cot over.  Her long slim arms wrapped around knees hugged up to her chest. Her head was bowed down; her coppery hair, loosed from its tight showgirl curls, fell in twisting locks over her shins. They shifted as she cried, catching the dim light and looking almost alive.

“Miss Stanley? Debbie?” Steve hesitated at the foot of her cot, realizing belatedly he was still carrying the shield prop. It clanged when he set it down. Debbie looked up, her face scrunched in misery.

“It’s Joe,” she said.

“God, I’m sorry.” Steve’s gut twisted. So many men were dying. He was wasting his strength lifting motorcycles full of dames.

Debbie shook her head. “No, he’s fine. He’s a dumbbell son of a bitch—excuse me—but he’s fine.” She smudged her eye makeup even more with a swipe of her forearm. “I mean, he got shot, but he’s getting better, and somewhere along the line he also got himself another girlfriend. A nurse.” She waved a crumpled letter around.

“Oh,” Steve said. “That’s awful.” Debbie was a stunner—all Star Spangled Singers were—and she’d knitted him wool socks when the weather started changing. Left them on his pillow without a note, like she’d done for some of the other girls. Steve figured she aimed to give everyone some by Christmas. He perched on the edge of the cot, half off, half on. “He’s an idiot.”

Debbie sniffed. “Yeah, I was crying ‘cause I want to kill him.”

Without thinking, Steve said what Bucky would say. “Well, now that the war’s not going to, yeah.”

There was an excruciating moment where Debbie simply stared at him, eyes shocked and round. Steve had his mouth open to retreat, but then she barked out a sudden loud, _ha!_ and then giggled in surprise at the sound.

“That’s horrible,” she said, but she was smiling and sniffling in equal parts. Finally she swiped beneath her eyes with her fingers, swiping through wetness there in an attempt to stop the spread of her makeup. _Tears have salt_ , Steve thought, out of nowhere. _Maybe I need salt_. Debbie sat up straighter, her feet falling down to hang off the side of the cot. Her eyes locked onto Steve’s. Her eyes were as blue as Bucky’s. Steve wondered why he’d never noticed that before.

Slowly, the smile faded from Debbie’s face, replaced by a tepid but composed expression. She was a telephone operator, waiting for Steve to tell her the number to connect. She looked at Steve steadily, all Bucky’s blue eyes and dark lashes. Slowly, she tilted her chin up, her eyes never leaving his. A tiny drop of salt water lingered on the edge of her chin, beading up and then falling soundlessly.

Steve’s mouth flooded with saliva, and the sensation was so bizarre after days of dust-dry swallows that he nearly gagged. But it felt wonderful, like he was coming alive. If he, if he could just--. Steve reached out with his right hand, slowly. Debbie stayed very still. His hand was halfway to her throat when Steve felt sharp twin pains in his mouth, along his top gum line.

The pain brought him back to the moment, to the horror of feeling two _foreign_ things in his mouth. He probed at one of them with his tongue, immediately regretting it when his tongue snagged painfully on its sharp tip.

“Ow,” Steve said, and then the blood from his tongue registered and somehow the moment flipped again. He was _thirsty_. He wanted to lick the salt off Debbie’s cheeks, slowly. He wanted to bend her head back until it would be easy to--so easy to—Steve’s hand was almost on Debbie’s throat, his grasping fingers inches away. His mouth was opening of its own accord, the new two teeth unsheathed.

With a small sigh, Debbie’s eyes fluttered closed and she fell back on the cot. Steve blinked stupidly at her. She had fainted. A woman he liked had fainted dead away because he was looking at her, because he wanted to, he wanted to--. He closed his mouth, locked it shut. The teeth were already sliding away, folding themselves back into his skull somehow, and it was disgusting in its strangeness.

Steve backed away from the cot, standing shakily. She lay still. _Help_ , he thought. He spun on his heel, his feet stumbling in his haste. The edge of the shield barked his shin on the way out of the tent.

“I need help!” Steve ran towards the medic tent through the thickly falling rain.

-*-

Steve climbed to consciousness through a scratchy haze. His eyes were sodden and his lips were numb. His limbs were heavy. His mind floundered, trying to remember. He’d been in the rain, panicked somehow, and there had been a dame with fiery hair--.

“Debbie?” Steve tried, but his numb lips felt enormous, it was like speaking through a pair of boulders.

“She’s fine, Steve, and you will be too.” Peggy Carter swam into view, and the rest of the afternoon sharpened into focus. Steve had made it to the medic’s tent, and Peggy had found him, ordered him to come with her. He’d barely stepped inside the tent—shocked to find out it was her own personal quarters—when she’d clocked him from behind and the world went black. His bleary vision and heavy limbs meant she’d drugged and tied him down, too.

“Fanks,” he muttered, his tongue fat.

“Don’t mention it,” Peggy said, and her syllables were clipped but her eyes were kind. “Are you feeling quite yourself now? No, nevermind, don’t answer that; you’ll be able to speak shortly and then we shall see.”

Peggy pulled up a chair, Steve found he was able to turn his head toward her, that his eyelids were lighter. He drank in her details: her uniform was sharp as always, her makeup and hair precise in a way most men would not have been able to name but Steve knew they responded to anyway. If he were to paint her, she’d be more lines than curves, even though that wasn’t strictly observable fact. She was a controlled element. Steve relaxed a fraction. He liked Peggy. More important, she was clearly the man for the job at the moment.

“I have some information I must share. But first, I will tell you that I am deeply, deeply sorry.” She held his gaze, her brown eyes warm with feeling. “You have suffered today as a result of my secrecy, and--I’ll call it for what it is—for my ugly pride. 

Steve wrinkled his brows, then raised an eyebrow. Peggy took this as the eloquent comment it was meant to be, _nothing about you is ugly, Peggy_ , and gave him a sad smile. “Your trust in my virtue is inspiring; fine, I will tell you all the facts and you can judge for yourself.

“Would you believe that it involves a castle? Johann Schmidt had imprisoned Dr. Erskine in an honest to God Bavarian castle. Because a regular prison just wasn’t dramatic enough.” Her smile was small, she was subdued. Steve blinked, _go on_.

“Well, no one considers the help, do they? I posed as his maid for a month—no, I did not have to bathe him, Steve your face—and whilst he prodded the good doctor to make the serum, I snooped. Not all of the myths Schmidt believed in were Teutonic. Some were from further East.  They told of men with the power to charm with their thoughts. Men who burned hot to the touch. When they were hungry, they were insensate. Insatiable. They craved--.” Her eyes darted to Steve’s and then away.

“Blood.” Steve formed the word carefully. That’s what he’d wanted from Debbie. Her tears would only have made him hungrier. He’d been reaching for her throat. “Monsters,” Steve croaked.

Peggy looked at him solemnly. “One month with Schmidt was enough to make me believe in the worst kind of monsters.”

Steve closed his eyes. “Tha’ss what I am, now. Evil.”

“No, Steve. You’re experimental. The serum didn’t make Schmidt a monster.” Peggy pulled out a bottle of liquid from her coat pocket. It was tiny, smaller than a finger. Its green glass glinted in the low light.  “How do you feel?”

Steve squinted at her. _Drugged and tied up, you mean?_ But even as he said it, he knew what she meant. The thirst was gone. Utterly. He felt sloppy, still a little numb, but that was fading fast. Symptoms of the drugs, then. He looked closely at Peggy, at her long legs and red lips. At her high, full breasts and her soft dark hair. And he felt nothing. Or, he felt no greater pull toward Peggy than he’d always felt. She was a hell of a woman and friend. Not anything he…hungered for.

“Better,” he said.

She grinned, obviously relieved. The expression suited her. “This works, then.” She held up the bottle. “Hematopoietic blood stem cells. The, er, I suppose you’d call them the template of all human blood cells. Dr. Erskine hypothesized they would work in the case his serum modifications did not. He made this batch as a failsafe.” Her expression sobered again. “I don’t know why it’s taken this long for the symptoms to manifest. I had filed it away, after months went by and you seemed well. Perfect, actually.” Steve winced, and she placed a hand on his where the binding held it fast.

“Steve, I’m sorry I never told you about the danger. After Dr. Erskine’s death--I was nearly demoted. No one alive knew the real risks, and it was my decision to keep it that way. I put more stock in being useful than being moral.” And there was something funny about that, wasn’t there? What would Bucky have said?

“People always tell me the opposite.” Steve smiled carefully, until she started untying his bindings.

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” he asked.

“I’m supposed to keep you tied up in my bed? Steven _Grant_.” His middle name was a tease in her mouth and despite everything, he felt himself getting hot with embarrassment. “You’re not a prisoner.” 

He thought of Debbie, of the slow, hypnotic drip of her tears. How she sat there and waited for him. “Maybe I should be. Or send me back to a lab.”

“Lab rat or jailbird? Not much of a choice, is it?” She had both his feet free now, and her hands on her hips.

“I can’t go back to the girls, Peggy. I could hurt them.”

“You could have always hurt them. But you didn’t. And you won’t.”

“I wish I could believe that,” he sighed.

She freed his right hand and shifted to the left. He could have broken the bonds easily now that the drugs were gone, but it was a comfort to feel her steady hands working to release him. She offered him a hand up, and he stood, unsteadily.  They looked at each other, each silently asking for the other’s trust.

“Take it. Three drops every three days.” She handed Steve the bottle. The glass was warm from her hand. Steve looked at it. Such a small shield against the thirst.

“You can’t go back to painting war posters from your flat in Brooklyn.” She had a file three inches thick on him. He’d always sensed that; it used to trip up his tongue, this feeling she saw more of him than he intended. “Not anymore. We need you front and center, Steve.”

A commotion outside her tent broke through their rapport. Peggy stuck her head outside the tent flap, and returned with a grim face. “The 107th has had a horrible war. Haven’t we all, I suppose. But those men more than most.”

Steve’s head shot up. “The 107th?”

-*-

“Captain America. How exciting. I am a great fan of your films.”

The building was exploding around them, enormous blooms of flame and debris shaking the factory to its foundations. Steve stood on a gangplank, the last bridge over the chasm of chemical fires and eruptions of machinery. Steve’s world narrowed down to the man approaching him; he held himself still as Schmidt advanced. Dimly, he remembered the desire to escape, how it had drained away from his muscles and mind the moment he laid eyes on Schmidt. Now, he merely felt the urge to _listen_ to him. Hearing what he had to say could be important. Schmidt was so very intelligent, after all. He was bound to have some insight. They were so similar.

“So Doctor Erskine managed it after all. Not exactly an improvement, are you.”

Schmidt was right. Steve was a copy of the real thing. Schmidt’s form was erect and precise. Confident. Steve admired him desperately. There was a bottle of cells in Steve’s left jacket pocket. They neutered him, they stilled the true beat of his heart. The heat rising up around him felt natural, he could burn as hot, burn as bright. Slowly, he unbuttoned the flap that held the pocket closed.

Schmidt’s eyes creased with pride. He raised a hand, fingers splayed. Steve removed the vial from his pocket and held it out to Schmidt. Schmidt seemed amused. “I have moved beyond that, and you will too, soldier.” With precision, he closed each finger until he held a fist aloft. Steve mirrored his action, felt the delicate glass of the vial crushing easily between his fingers.

To his left, Bucky fell to his knees. “Steve.”

Steve awoke. He whipped around and elbowed Schmidt in the face. Schmidt retaliated almost instantly; Steve barely had time to hold up his shield before he imprinted it with his fist. The fight was short and brutal, ending only when Schmidt’s assistant pulled a switch that separated the two parts of the gangplank, creating a hellish abyss between them. Steve spared a glance for Bucky, he was hanging on to the metal railing of the gangplank like it was the crutch of a lifelong cripple.

Steve turned to Schmidt to see him, horribly, pulling off his _face_. Steve felt every iota of his own disgust, and the sharp feeling was almost a relief. Schmidt had somehow held them here while the building collapsed around them. How, Steve couldn’t quite remember. The details were fuzzy. He felt like it was the morning after Bucky had dared Steve to match him whiskey for whiskey until his skinny body had been plowed under and taken his churning brain with it. Schmidt had stopped him from fighting back, had made him destroy his antidote. And now Schmidt was showing them both, _showing Bucky_ what men like them truly were. His mask had hair on it, grotesque little rows jutting out of claylike skin. Schmidt tossed the mask into the fires below them. Its empty eye sockets deformed and melted away before it disappeared. Schmidt’s true face grinned at them like a nightmare.

“You got one of those, too?” Bucky muttered. _That’s what I’ll become_ , Steve thought, _in three days_.

“Best keep him with you, Captain. For the hunger.” Schmidt gestured to Bucky and then hissed, an animal, catlike sound. Slim fangs shot down, gleaming with spit and wickedly curved, like a cobra’s. They flickered orange and gold in the light of the explosions. _Oh, God. That’s what I already am._

“What the fuck,” Bucky said.

“Face it, Captain, you and I have left humanity behind.” Schmidt’s words wormed their way inside Steve’s gut.

And moments later, when Steve was jumping though a cloud of fire, his hands outstretched and legs flailing, a part of him hoped to fall and burn himself clean.

-*-

“Good news or bad news?” Steve asked Bucky. Bucky’s face was contorted with effort.

Bucky and Steve’s half shelter was tied to the tank and staked on the other end to the ground, forming a small triangle. He and Bucky were locked in battle: Bucky had insisted. Their elbows scraped patterns into the dirt as they arm wrestled. Steve could feel the warm puffs of Bucky’s breath. It stunk.

After the rescue, the men had walked straight through for 12 hours, pulled along by terror and sheer will. Steve had finally called for a rest and they’d made camp just before nightfall. The men needed time to eat, time to tend the wounded. The Hydra base’s last standing storehouse had been badly burnt, but they’d salvaged enough supplies to load up a truck and most of the men’s packs. None of that would last long, but tonight at least the men would sleep on full rations.  

Bucky’s hand was warm and strong in his. Steve could feel the tendons flexing and bones shifting. He was alive. Steve hoped desperately he’d have the time to see their rescue through.

“What?” Bucky was puffing out his cheeks, breathing hard. He looked ridiculous.

 “Good news or bad news first?” Steve needed to say this tonight. He’d seen Bucky’s disgust when Schmidt had peeled away his skin.

“Bad.”

Steve drew a breath. “So the good news is,” Bucky gave him a look, then turned back to stare at his own arm, as if willing it to grow muscle on the spot. “I don’t have a crusty demon face under here.”

“That’s not your crusty demon face?”

Steve strained a little and Bucky’s knuckles kissed the dirt. At Bucky’s indignant _agh_ , Steve added, “Also, I’m really strong now.”

Bucky flopped back onto his sleeping bag in a showy flail, then rolled back toward Steve. He lay on his side, his face propped on his bent arm; Steve mirrored him. The last of the twilight tinted Bucky’s cheeks blue and shaded his lashes purple. As kids they’d “camped” beneath a blanket stretched between the couch back and the window sill. Sometimes Steve thought his life was looped, coming back endlessly to this point, he and Bucky huddled alone together.

“The bad news. Well, it’s pretty bad, Buck. The serum that made me big, it has to be fed. My blood cells start to deform if I don’t—ingest—live human cells.”

“Wait…you’re a _cannibal_?” Bucky’s voice rose and he thunked his hand on the dirt for emphasis.

“No!” Steve winced at his own volume, brought it down to a whisper-shout. “No! I don’t eat people! I _take medicine_. Every three days. It works, I’m fine. But--” Steve’s stomach lurched like he’d missed a stair. The last thing he wanted to do was give voice to his terror.

 “There’s a ‘but’?”

He remembered Debbie, sprawled out on her cot, her warm skin singing. He’d be damned before he let that happen to anyone else. “I don’t know how much you remember about when we ran into Schmidt.”

“I remember thinking he was a swell guy. Handsome and decisive. And then he tried to kill you.”

“He put the whammy on us and destroyed the medicine.”

“Shit, Steve!” Bucky glared at him from under lowered brows, face set. “So what happens now? How bad is this gonna get?”

Steve could barely get the next words out through the tightness in his throat. “If I don't get more medicine, I might die in three days. Best case.”

“Death is the best case.” Bucky’s voice was dry enough to parch earth. “For a minute there I was worried.”

“Worst case--” Steve’s voice waivered. “I could kill people.”

Bucky raised his eyebrows in a parody of shock, his labile face swinging from worry to sarcasm faster than Al Lopez at a fastball. He looked around the darkening tent with exaggerated care, as if to take in the whole camp around them. “Gee, and here I thought we might have to kill people. You know, like goddamn Hydra.” His anger surfaced; it focused Steve.

“That’s just it! Peggy said I wouldn’t know friend from foe.” _Insensate, insatiable._ “You think our guys deserve a captain like that?”

Bucky scoffed, incredulous, but he kept quiet, lips pressed in an unsmiling line. The tent was nearly dark now, shadows chiseled deep lines of worry into Bucky’s forehead. Steve stared back, letting the emotions knot up his features, letting it all show.

“Bucky,” Steve began. “If we’re not gonna make it back in time. If we’re still a few days out when.”

Bucky’s face went blank. “No, screw this talk. We’ll get you back to base, end of story.”

“I have to know someone can make sure I can’t hurt anyone.”

Bucky stared at him. Only the set of his jaw betrayed him, the rest of his face was emotionless. Steve got ready to retrench. This was too important to give on.

Bucky sighed. “That’s your stubborn face. Looks the same, though your head’s even bigger now.”

“That’s not a ‘yes’,” Steve pointed out.

Bucky gave a full body shrug and rolled onto his back, squinting hard, like he was looking for stars in the dirty canvas. “It’s a yes--sure. I’ll drug you up, tie you down, whatever you want. Throw you in the back of the truck. But we’re getting you back. Getting you some more medicine.”

The confidence in Bucky’s voice silenced Steve. It was the same tone he’d used every spring, when the pollen flooded Steve’s lungs and the humidity started to rise. An amp of adrenaline cost nearly twice what Steve made in a week, when he was working. And he wasn’t working when he needed adrenaline. After his mom died, Bucky’d come by with extra food from home, cuts of meat from his job at the butcher’s. Twice, there were a couple of amps rolled up in grubby five dollar bills. Steve hated them. He used every drop.

Bucky seemed to hear his thoughts. “Just like old times,” he muttered, and shoved a bent arm under his head. He blinked slowly, and Steve saw the ghost of the dopey look Bucky used to get when he was drunk. Bucky’s eyes dropped closed and his breath evened out almost at once. This rocky lean-to was probably the most comfortable bed he’d had in a month. 

Bucky’s mouth fell open in a soft snore. His lips had a distinctive sullen curve to them. Steve had drawn it a million times over the years, and it was still even odds whether he’d get it right. It was tricky; his lips bowed down where others’ swooped up. As a kid he looked recalcitrant until his smiled, which only magnified the effect. Later, when the dames started coming around, Bucky let the girls do the work of interpreting his pout. Steve snorted softly. They didn’t seem to mind putting in the effort. But there were no dames here. Steve would just have to make sure Bucky and his difficult face got back home to them. He laid back in his sleeping bag, but kept his face turned toward Bucky.

Steve allowed himself the luxury of looking until darkness swallowed them both.

-*-

In the middle of the first night, they lost Private Murray from Iowa. He’d been gangrenous, his mangled leg beyond all the supplies they had. Jean, one of the two medics, had examined him that morning. He shook his head and saved the small cache of penicillin for other men. Steve had asked four men to carry Henry between them anyway. They struggled on all day. A private delivered the news to Steve as he was briefing the first watch of the evening. Steve hated the relief he felt. He knew it was for himself—the wounded slowed them down. A day was already gone.

Steve dug the grave himself, by a sliver of moonlight. If he were honest, Steve would have taken any excuse to leave Bucky sleeping alone in their tent. He didn’t trust the part of himself that wanted nothing more than to stay right there with him. Sure, Bucky had spent the night before the war— _it’s too damn loud at my house you know that_ —and Steve worried a little about being so close, looking too long at the turns of Bucky’s knuckles as he did the dishes or the spread of Bucky’s knees as he sprawled in a chair with the paper. It had never been a huge problem: it was hard to think much about your cock when you were struggling just to fill your lungs or your belly on the regular. And Bucky himself was so thoroughly pointed toward dames: reason enough to hide the edges of his desire, such that it was.

But Steve was ravenous lately in a way that he hadn’t been before the serum. Beyond just the smell of ready blood—Steve could admit that everyone’s blood appealed—he was filled with a prickly awareness of Bucky in particular. Even marching near Bucky raised his hackles, like the side of his body nearer Bucky was somehow more awake than the rest of him.

Steve slammed the shovel into the November-hardened ground again and again. _Thud_ , it sank into the body of the Earth, _thud_ , it tore it apart. Steve’s arms and torso ran with sweat; he’d stripped down to pants only, to avoid trapping the sweat on his core later. He burned so hot, he doubted it mattered, but he wanted to be a good example. It didn’t take long. Steve’s heaving body made short work of the task. Private Murray had not been a large man. Steve stood in the biting autumn cold and was warm and strong.

Steve gave Murray’s tags to his best friend in the ranks, a Russian who’d been in the same HYRDA cell. The man was still in the medic’s tent, where he’d been by Murray’s side. Steve bet they’d never held a conversation in the same language. “Henry,” the man said, and Steve nodded and walked away. _Two days,_ he thought, _and if they didn’t make it back to base, well. Bucky would know what to do with his tags_. Steve took first, second and third watch that night.

On morning of the second day, Steve took scout patrol. Bucky protested, furious— _you and your tin can lid are not patrolling solo_ —but Steve was out of camp before Bucky even had his boots on.

The air away from camp was cleaner; to the point, it didn’t smell like men. Like bodies nearby with cells he craved. He’d almost asked the private in charge of the K rations if someone was cooking up bacon in camp. After that, it had been time to go.  He headed out into the near-dark of early dawn as Bucky cursed behind him.

Steve kept to the safer route, circling the camp wide instead of forging out on a vector. He worked quickly, legs tirelessly loping along, heightened senses alert. There was a light frost on the ground, tracing the fallen leaves, cloaking the dirt in lace. Birds were awake, Steve could make out three distinct calls. Not many chances to see birds in Brooklyn. Or trees even. Trees here were old, towering, unchained. Steve didn’t want to know if his super-hearing could pick up anything from trees; he hoped not. He didn’t like them much. They created an unfamiliar claustrophobia, every gap a door anything could step out of.  A small creature skittered—

Steve shot the man before he even knew a man was there. German, he registered now, saw the dull khaki of the uniform and the helmet even as the man’s arms were flung wide, his body thrown back by Steve’s bullet. A gut shot. Steve aimed for the head shot but the man was already down. He’d seemed alone, unusual enough that Steve approached with extreme caution. Steve’s mind had ready excuses for advancing: he had to establish the man was truly alone; maybe he could be saved, taken prisoner and questioned.

The sight of the man—a boy almost—sprawled out on the ground drove all the excuses from Steve’s mind. The German lived, still, clutching his middle with desperate hands. His fingers couldn’t hold in the blood, which was seeping scarlet from the wound. It was viciously bright, dousing all the surrounding colors into dull brown on brown. The world narrowed to his tight breaths; they sounded as near as Steve’s own. The man gasped as he saw Steve, legs kicking weakly as he tried to back away. The effort loosed another stream from the wound, the smell hit Steve like a slap. Steve holstered his weapon and raised his hands.

“It’s okay,” Steve said, and he felt the hair on the back of his neck rise as he heard the added timbre in his voice. The Captain America sales pitch tone.

“Es ist in Ordnung,” the young soldier gasped, and he stopped struggling. His face smoothed out, sagging in relief. He seemed to feel no pain. Steve looked at him, anguished. He’d done to the German what Schmidt had done to him. Mesmerized him, just like that. Could he do that to anyone? Had he already?

The man blinked, slowly. He was done for, but a gut wound was slow. Steve should shoot him and warn the others the enemy was nearer than they’d planned. The base was close. He still had one day left, if they avoided the enemy, they might make it. Maybe Bucky _could_ find bonds that would hold him.  

The young man sighed as his eyes drifted back to Steve’s. His lips were gray, all the color was threading through his hands. The German’s eyes were clear but focused inward; he saw past Steve to something else. To someone else.

“Karin.” His mouth shaped the word, soundless, but Steve heard it as if the man had spoken into his ear. Steve walked over and knelt at his side.

“She is well,” Steve promised, using the tone, and the man’s eyes fluttered shut. A tiny smile curved his bloodless lips, and Steve took the man’s hand in his. The hand was warm, sticky with blood. His fingers traced rouge across Steve’s palm as Steve turned the hand to expose the wrist. Steve replaced the man’s hand on his gut with one hand, helping to hold the stream inside while his other hand cradled the man’s hand aloft.  Steve murmured _Est ist okay_ and brought the man’s wrist to his lips. His fangs engaged at once, and the predatory violence of their descent almost made Steve gag. They seemed to belong to some other animal.

And then they receded and the warm blood hit his mouth. It was savory and coppery and Steve drank. It tasted amazing, as good as home cooking on a February night, as good as an icebox Coke in July. Steve clamped his teeth around the limb more fully, and hardly noted the strange fleshy give. The taste was too good and he was starving, he was craving it. 

He shuffled even nearer to the man’s torso, gaining leverage, and then with the hand on man’s gut, he _pushed_. A fresh flow hit his throat and Steve’s nostrils flared to take in breath as he drank it down. He was taking so much, but it was helping him, he could feel it working almost, cooling the strange itch under his skin. The itch to take himself apart, to undo all the serum’s strength and himself along with it. Steve closed his eyes, overwhelmed, and thought of Bucky. With his strength, Steve could save him five times over, always save him. He could keep him near through the whole war, a handspan away, a breath away. Steve could look him in the eyes and say—

“ _Steve_?” Bucky’s voice hit Steve’s ears like a thunderclap. Steve spat out the German’s arm, rising too fast, overbalancing. He fell back on his ass hard before scrambling up. His nails scrabbled in the dirt as he gained purchase to stand. He was halfway to wiping his mouth with the back of his sleeve when he froze. Erasing his trespass was the last thing he wanted to do. He straightened up and looked at Bucky square.

Bucky’s eyes were comically wide, his mouth hanging open. Life had suddenly returned to the forest, too strong and too loud. Steve could smell the pines and hear the wind rustle through the cove of trees. Bucky’s sweater was green, and threatening to fall off. He was clutching his rifle, barring it across his chest and Steve thought _to keep me out_ before words found him.

Steve’s voice barely stumbled. “He was solo. Probably a deserter, as—“

“As Krauts don’t patrol alone. _No one_ patrols alone,” Bucky glared. Telling Steve off reanimated him, though, and soon he was pushing forward. “Jesus,” Bucky said, looking at the gray corpse. Steve hadn’t even noted the moment the German had passed. He cringed: butchers took more care.

They dragged the man to a patch of underbrush. Steve knelt and rested his forehead briefly on the thick canvas of the man’s coat, near his heart. He thought only _Karin_ as they pushed the man under the brush and rearranged it to conceal him.

“I didn’t know I was going to do that,” Steve blurted.

“Good idea, though,” Bucky said simply.

Steve sputtered, “I didn’t _want_ to do that.”

Bucky raised an eyebrow. “He was a Nazi. I’ll get you all the Krauts in Italy.”

“I’m not a— _rat_.” Steve put all his disgust into the word. He was a soldier, not an animal.

Bucky stared at him, blank-faced.

Steve opened his mouth to change tactics when Bucky whistled.

The forms of Dum-Dum and Happy materialized out of the trees. Both men were on alert, with obvious orders to await them. Steve wasn’t sure if he was annoyed Bucky had ambushed him like this or infinitely grateful he’d stopped them from following him all the way to Steve.

“Sitrep,” Bucky said, and both of them nodded curtly, as good as salutes.  

“All’s quiet,” Dum Dum said, and then spared a brief puzzled glance at Steve’s face. With horror, Steve realized he never did wipe his mouth. He suffered an excruciating five seconds fighting the urge to turn up his collar. Dum Dum shook his head a little, _I don’t need to know_ , and said, “The men are nearly ready to move. Denier asked the men to sort into 20 squads of 20, per your order, Cap.”

Steve found his voice, “Good. Have the squad leaders partner up so one can stay with the both squads when we need the other for briefings. Briefings take place on the move, first one is oh nine hundred. We’ll march two squads at a time, with ten minutes of separation and runners between. Men who can’t walk easily should be distributed in middle 6-8 squads so we can protect the front and rear with the able bodied. The supply trunk and tank go in the middle too.”

“Cap,” Dum Dum said, in unison with Happy’s, “Sir.” Bucky quirked his mouth like they’d said something funny.

Steve continued, “We need to make it as far as we can today. There’s another German patrol nearby, maybe a platoon or two. I don’t think they’re Hydra or they’d be on us by now.”  

“But they ain’t friends.” Dum Dum muttered.

Steve acknowledged him with a nod. “Oh nine hundred, bring the squad leaders and Morita and Falsworth. Dernier, too.”

With a last _sir_ from Happy and a squint from Dum Dum, they left, hurrying to carry the news to the men. The trees swallowed them up. Steve followed them with his eyes, turning to Bucky in time to catch a water-soaked rag with his face.

“Clean up, you’re a horror.”

Bucky was not looking at Steve, no question his order would be followed. He used to do that to Steve, before; they used to do that to each other. Steve couldn’t count how often Bucky had smacked him with a comb, his own hair already slicked into place. Steve wiped his face. The blood had crusted, he had to scrub. When he looked up, Bucky had on one of his most dangerous expressions: he was thinking.

Steve was just about to give him what for when they heard the first shots ring out.

-*-

“That chubby one looks tasty,” Bucky panted.

“I said shut it,” Steve bashed his shield into the side of one man and shot into the thigh of another. Both went down; he kicked the gun away from the one clutching his leg.

“Fat head.” Bucky had out a knife, he’d emptied his rounds into the first line of Germans while Steve was barking orders to _fall back, circle the middle squads._ He slashed it toward a German who’d come too close to aim the rifle he carried. The German evaded, then swung the bayonet back Bucky’s way. Too slow; Bucky kicked it, then elbowed the guy in the face.

Dum Dum and Morita’s crews had left to flank the truck and tank. Right now Steve, Bucky and Happy’s squad were aiming for the high ground, hoping to take it before the Krauts set up shop and fired up the automatics. Steve saw Roberts down on his knees, took a shot at the guy behind him, missed. Steve was already running; he leapt over Roberts to take the German down with his shield. Roberts passed out right there, but there was no time. Steve spared him a second glance and then dug in his heels, running up the bluff.

Two teams of Germans were already there, the leader of the attack was clearly no fool. Steve got shot at immediately. Glancing shots bounced off his shield, but Steve didn’t want to chance too many direct hits to the prop. He rolled and twisted, ducked behind a tree, leapt. He landed in the middle of the first group with a handgun that clicked instead of fired. _Empty chamber._ Steve clocked a guy with the barrel, then threw his sidearm away and started throwing punches. It was close quarters; the Germans weren’t risking friendly fire casualties against one man. Their mistake: Steve swept a man’s legs from under him, knocked him out with a boot to the head. He broke another’s arm with a single punch and elbowed him into oblivion. The last man dropped his weapon, surrendering, but Steve didn’t have time to babysit. Regretfully Steve choked him out, keeping the Hollwitzer and his shield between him and the second group of Germans. A few shots peppered the ground around him.

Steve grabbed the gun on its stand and swung it to aim at the Germans. Had the crew set it up before Steve took them out? Steve couldn’t even tell. The other Germans could, though; they hesitated just long enough for Steve to press what he thought was the trigger. A line of dirt sprayed at the Germans’ feet; they backed up right into Bucky, Happy and four of his men. They were disarmed, not gently, but with no further causalities. Thank god. Steve wasn’t sure he’d have been able to mow those men down.

Steve looked at Bucky. Slowly, Bucky raised his eyebrows, then pointedly looked out over the field. Happy’s men had disabled or rounded up the rest of the Germans in this group. A piercing double whistle sounded: Dernier checking in, the middle squads were OK. They were the most vulnerable; Steve took a careful breath. He’d have to wait for the full set of reports, but it seemed like the Hydra POWs had held their own. Steve had led tired and wounded men, men who were mere hours past the first full meal they’d had in months. He’d led them against the enemy twice and prevailed.

Bucky’s eyes held Steve’s. He squinted a little, raised his chin in Steve’s direction. _This is yours._ Swaths of red stained the field below them. Steve sighed, pressed his lips together. He needed that medicine. Otherwise someday soon he’d come awake with his face buried in a dead guy’s neck. Maybe Bucky’s. He couldn’t live with that. He was still a man.

Steve shouldered packs off wounded men, piling them onto his shoulders. His feet sank deeply into the ground as he walked into the trees.

-*-

Steve woke on his stomach with his hand in his pants. He was half hard, and painfully hot inside his sleeping bag. Without thinking, he shifted a bit, his body wriggling around to try and wring pleasure out of the moment, or at least relief. He was wound tight ever since this morning, with the German—he froze, coming to full awareness. The thought of the young man’s face killed any drive Steve had to follow through. He flipped over, freeing his hand and breathed evenly, slowly.

It was raining steadily, as it had been when he and the men had hunkered down in their tents—no use trying to march in the rain, in the dark. His dreams faded even as he chased them, leaving him only with the unquiet feeling that he’d been dreaming about a battlefield. The details weren’t clear, but he’d been filled with the sense memory of swinging the shield relentlessly, combatants ebbing and flowing up to meet him, like waves at the ocean.

Bucky’s side of the tent was empty except for the plasma kit he’d requisitioned from the newly captured medical supplies. He’d actually grinned at Steve when he found it, pawning supplies from his pack onto other soldiers to make room. Steve looked at it and heard his heartbeat like a metronome, a personal countdown.  The cells lasted three days. How long did a whole person last? He was going to find out. _Please, God. Let it be long enough._

Steve, giving up on the rest of the rainstorm’s worth of rest, went to go make the rounds, check in on his men. Probably some of them were as sleepless as he and Bucky were. It’d been twelve hours since they saw any action, but not all of the Germans had been captured in their most recent skirmish—the Nazi communications truck made it out, for one. They’d had to change their intended route: too easy to be guessed. And with no radios, they weren’t even sure how far out they were, or exactly where. It wasn’t a relaxing situation.

The rations lean-to was made from a large oiled tarp stretched from the back of their supply truck. Bucky was there, smoking with Jones. Steve fought the urge to turn back around; he didn’t want to see the pull of the cigarette at Bucky’s lower lip, to see him exhale.  Bucky hadn’t smoked before the war, or not much. He kept it to dance halls and the docks, away from Steve and his weak lungs. Now it seemed like Bucky smoked more than he ate, and that wasn’t right; he’d always wolfed down food before the war. Steve never thought he’d miss Bucky’s open mouth chewing and food-laden smiles.

Jones was eating unheated canned mystery meat; Steve’s nose wrinkled with displeasure even as his stomach grumbled.

“Yeah, I know,” Jones said. “The Nazi stuff ain’t any better than what we have.” He turned the can: a swastika. “Plus, no Tootsie Rolls.”

“You’re obsessed,” Bucky said. “Couldn’t sleep?” At Steve’s nod he said to Jones, “Funny, me either.” He pointed a thumb at Steve, “Night farter.” He took a long pull on the cigarette.

Steve ignored him, looked over Jones’ shoulder. “Who’s that?”

Jones smiled, his teeth bright in the dim lantern light. He held out a tiny picture. It was worn, barely a smudge of a face and a flash of smile. Large eyes and soft curls. Steve reached for it, to look closer, but Bucky smacked his hand down.

“You don’t know how he hid that from Hydra,” Bucky said.

“Fuck you, Barnes,” Jones said, “That’s my Norma. French teacher.”

“Pretty,” Steve said politely, but he couldn’t take much pleasure in Jones’ pleased nod; he knew what came next.

Sure enough, Jones asked, “Got a gal, Cap?”

Steve felt Bucky’s eyes boring into the side of his face. No one had ever asked Steve that in Bucky’s earshot. Jones didn’t know runty Steve Rogers from Brooklyn had ever existed, not really. He’d been locked up during Captain America’s illustrious film career.

He had told Bucky he wasn’t much for girls, practically the second it had finally occurred to him, at fifteen and three months. Of course he had. He and Bucky were like that, no space between them. And Bucky’d just said _yeah, ok, more girls for me,_ as if girls had ever looked at Steve anyway. They never really talked about it, after that. They went out of their way not to talk about it.

“Oh shit, he’s handsome now, isn’t he.” Bucky sounded mournful. Then he brightened, “Maybe he’ll have too many dames to deal with.”

“You must have trouble, Barnes; that ugly mug,” Jones agreed. “God just likes some people better, I guess.” He spooned a large bite of meat goop into his mouth ostentatiously.

Steve appreciated what Bucky was doing for him.  Still, he’d been asked a direct question. Steve did not look at Bucky. “No,” he said quietly, “There’s no one back home.”

Jones regarded Steve for a beat, then dropped the empty can on the ground. He crushed it under his boot, utterly smashing it. With a look of distaste, he folded it in half with the tip of his boot until the swastika couldn’t be seen.

“Here, here,” Bucky said, miming a vague salute.

Steve’s heart pumped on. _Tick-tock_.

-*-

The cave boomed like a god shouting in fury.  Steve was already lying down, but Bucky and Morita stumbled into each other as they entered the small cavern where they’d set up a temporary headquarters. Dum Dum was already there, deep in conference with Jones; Jones and Fallsworth were the runners, relaying Steve’s orders to their patrols. But they weren’t Steve’s orders now; hadn’t been for a few hours. Dum Dum had taken over when Bucky snorted at the honor.

Morita swore with feeling, his body hunching over the needle he held in his hand, protecting it from the fine shower of dust that fell from the low rock ceiling. He somehow kept it sterile, and Bucky guided his hunched form over to Steve, helping him kneel. Bucky cradled the large glass bottle of reconstituted plasma in the crook of his elbow as he braced against the side of the cavern. Morita held the rubber tubing in his mouth; he looped one hand through Steve’s harness for stability and positioned the needle with the other. 

“One, two, three,” Morita muttered around the tube, and he found Steve’s vein while Bucky lifted the bottle high.

Steve felt a cool flooding sensation in his arm, along with an unpleasant pressure. The bulge of skin around the needle looked subtly wrong, a strange lump. Morita handed Steve a roll of gauze and Steve wrapped his elbow to hold the needle in place. He was just as happy not to see it anymore.

Bucky was wedged into the curve of the cave, holding the bottle steadily. “Five minutes,” Bucky yelled, over the roar of a new rumbling of explosions. “Tops.” Bucky had done this before, then.

It said much about their last seventy two hours that holed up and under siege was the first time they’d had six minutes to use the kit. Morita had wanted to wait until after the survivors had formed a counterattack, but one look at Steve’s pinched face and Bucky’d told Morita how they were going to play it.

Now, Steve nodded to Morita, _I’ve got it_ , and Morita slipped back outside to his temporary infirmary: a patch of ground inside the main cavern where the wounded lay groaning.

 _Please work_ , Steve prayed. _Please, god. Let this work._

They hadn’t made it back to HQ. It had been four days since Karin’s German, two days since they’d hit the river--“can’t avoid an unpassable river if you don’t have a map,” Jones had observed drily--and one more day since they’d been beset by additional troops—nearly a whole battalion. They’d retreated to the relative shelter of a box canyon and a series of caves; Bucky nearly carrying Steve at that point.

That was three hours ago now, and Steve’s body had started to ache, deep down. His head was alternately throbbing and floating-light, like it wasn’t sure if it were part of his body or not. He leaned against the unyeilding wall of the cave, letting the steady sounds of artillery fire drum a counterpart to the pressure in his head. Falsworth returned with a sitrep, and Steve felt the eyes of the men on him. Dum Dum, Jones, Morita, Falsworth. Bucky. Their heroic captain, no obvious wounds, but nearly passed out and hooked up to a pint of plasma.

Steve wanted to hear the report, tried desperately to focus. He drifted instead. He was hot, as he always was now. Even the high altitude chill didn’t touch him. It was easy to remember the inferno of the Hydra base as it exploded around them. He’d killed that day. Most of them he’d simply knocked out, but one man he’d pushed over a railing into a vat of acid. He thought that was his first. The man had been beyond screaming, but he’d writhed in an animal pain as everything that made him human was burned away, layer by layer. Steve had watched flesh liquefy and muscles and bones twitch until the man was still. It didn’t take long; it took forever. Steve spent the whole time wishing he could reach down and pull him back up. Then he’d thought _Bucky_ and run.

Bucky’s face when he’d seen Steve had been alight with wonder, like Steve was an angel and Stark’s newest rocket ship and the world’s finest dame all in one. Steve had been just as consumed, bending down close. He’d run his nose from the V of Bucky’s open collar up to the jut of his jaw, inhaling all the way.

“Steve?” Bucky had said, voice trembling a little.

“Yeah, Bucky, it’s me,” he’d grated out, and then he’d split Bucky’s bonds with his bare hands.

Bucky slumped back onto the examination table with relief. His mouth curled with a small smile. “I’ve been waiting for you,” he said. Then he raised his left hand to Steve, holding it straight up so Steve could see the slice the shackles had made in the soft flesh of his forearm. A small trickle of blood ran down to his bent elbow, a snaking ribbon that followed the ridges of his veins and the planes of his arm. The liquid seemed almost to have a life of its own, flowing from the wound and crisscrossing Bucky’s left arm, encircling it in a lattice of red. The blood kept moving, alive and glistening in the light of the soundless explosions around them. Bucky sat up and reached for Steve with his red arm, fingers outstretched gracefully. The room was beginning to crumble, chunks of wall and ceiling crashing to the ground in the unnatural silence a mind creates when it’s too loud to process. Bucky was the only thing that made sense. He was so beautiful.

“Hold still,” Bucky said, and he stroked a bloody thumb across Steve’s lower lip. Then his gentle fingers brushed over Steve’s eyes, shutting them, wetting his eyelids with stripes of blood. Steve let his tongue snake out to taste, and he heard Bucky say, “You’ll be the death of me,” and then Steve was licking his lips and Bucky’s blood was metallic and strange. It quickly took hold of him like a poison, scalding his mouth and throat until he was choking on his own bile. He had swallowed acid, and it was eating him from the inside out. His gut was writhing, falling out of shape inside him. And then his gums were loosening, growing abscesses and then cleaving away from his chomping teeth. An acrid stench surrounded him, and Steve’s eyes flew open—.

Bucky was hunched in front of him, Steve’s jacket fisted in each hand. “Steve?” Then, to Morita, “take it out!”

Then Morita’s hands were at his elbow, taking out the needle feeding fire into his veins, but it was too late. Steve rattled worse than the besieged walls around him; he was shaking apart, seizing and flailing. He couldn’t see anything; his eyes were rolling dangerously hard in their sockets. _Bucky_ he tried, but his tongue was frozen, all that came out was a constricted _eh eh eh_. He was shutting down, his senses tunneling into unconsciousness.

The last thing he heard was an ominous rumbling of stone and Bucky shouting, “God damn it, we have to get out of here!”

-*-

 “I gotta stay, but for crissakes, _go_ ,” Bucky’s voice brought Steve around. He sounded ready to snap his cap.

“We’re staying ‘til the end.”  Dum Dum sounded just as annoyed.

Groggily, Steve opened his eyes. Sure enough, Dum Dum and Bucky’s familiar figures greeted him. Steve was relieved down to his bones. Less comforting was that the only light in the dim cavern came from a tiny Hydra lantern, burning the same unholy blue as the demolition guns. Steve’s brain was fuzzy, but he knew they’d been under fire, a barrage that wouldn’t have stopped even in the cover of night. The darkness meant a cave in.

Bucky’s speech slowed to a drawl, “We’ll crawl out after you.” He spread out the last few words until they were insultingly slow.

“The passage we’re digging is barely big enough for one man, leastwise a man dragging another out.”

“If you could even move him, Ace.” Morita had joined the discussion; the room was close with stale sweat and drawn brows.

Dum Dum, rolling his eyes at Bucky, brightened as he saw Steve’s eyes were open. Bucky looked, if anything, more put out.

“Steve!” Bucky said, “Tell these assholes to save their hides.”

“Hiya, Cap,” Dum Dum said, ignoring Bucky and squatting down. “We’re pretty fucked,” he said amiably.

“We’re shut in,” Bucky said plainly. “The Nazis bombed the shit out of us.”

Dum Dum cleared his throat, confirmation. “The guys are digging—Dernier is having a field day with our last few bombs. It may be a way out, but for now the wounded gotta stay.”

 _No, no no no._ Steve struggled to sit more upright. He floundered; his body was uncooperative. Weak and aching. He finally got himself to a seated position, his back scraping the rough stone. Resigned to his undignified position, Steve gestured as best he could. “What’s?” His voice was raspy and quiet, like he hadn’t talked for years.

“You’ve been out for 14 hours. We’ve been caved in for three. But at least they’ve stopped shooting us,” Morita said while Bucky glowered off to the side. “How do you feel?”

Steve let himself feel the pain. His body felt loose, like maybe the stuff the holds a person together was getting soft somehow. Everything was slow to respond. His thoughts, his muscles.

“Pulled taffy,” Steve finally got out. They had had nearly 90 wounded before the cave in. He was now one of them. The worst of them, because men would stay with him, and die. _Please leave me_ , _please go._ Steve thought.

“Let’s check the progress of the tunnel,” Dum Dum said abruptly, and they all left the small cavern. Steve blinked. Good. Their leaving was good.

He stared dully around him. His eyes were half lidded; he was staring at his own shoes for five long seconds before he identified them. He’d lost a shoelace. Go back to sleep? The way things were, he might not wake up. Bucky and Dum Dum were working on things. That was good. Bucky was--

Bucky was back. He slipped inside and rushed to squat in front of Steve. “Jesus, I thought they’d never give me a chance. Stubborn sons of bitches. Steve. Steve!” Bucky smacked Steve’s cheek lightly, and he realized his eyes had closed in relief at Bucky’s return. Bucky’s brow furrowed as he looked Steve up and down. “Grandma Rose could lay you flat.”

Bucky was unbuttoning his shirt cuff, rolling up his left sleeve. “Bucky?” Steve’s brain was chugging slowly, train wheels spinning and catching on a wet track. 

Unceremoniously, Bucky stuck out his bare arm. “C’mon,” he said. He turned his head away.

Steve stared at the veins in Bucky’s forearm. They branched out, twisting through pale skin like the bloody lattice from Steve’s nightmare. That Bucky had looked at him and spoke Steve’s mind. _You’ll be the death of me._

Steve tried to stand. Foolish instinct: it was always getting him pounded when he should just stay down. His legs couldn’t hold him; he tottered forward like an old man. His struggling legs kicked a bottle of something that broke with a crash on the stone floor. A sliver of glass hit his calf; he reflexively jerked his leg up, and that was it. He was going to fall head first into the stone. It would be lights out.

“Whoa, whoa,” Bucky said, and caught him. He braced himself against Steve, holding him up by the armpits.  Steve looked up right into Bucky’s worried face. Steve was laboring to breathe; he saw Bucky’s eyes zero in on his mouth and his frown deepened.

“Gotta,” Steve stammered, and Bucky said _yeah, ok,_ and started to lower Steve to the ground.

“Hold up,” Bucky muttered, and kicked away a piece of glass with his boot awkwardly.  Steve clung to Bucky, half up, half down, and wished he were unconscious. Finally they made it to the ground. The stone was hard and cold against his left shoulder and cheek; he was slumped against it like he’d been tossed there.  

“Kill you.” Steve managed. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could stay conscious. 

“Bullshit. You’re too stubborn.”

Steve fumbled for a reply, but there were empty spaces between his thoughts. His mind was expanding, the parts of him scattering. He fell onto his back, and he was staring at the dusty ceiling of the cavern. It would be a fitting tomb. He closed his eyes. He couldn’t gather himself. Vaguely, Steve heard _damn it, Steve_ and maybe it was now but maybe it was long ago and Steve was sprawled somewhere dirty, the grit of the streets coating his lips, sanding his teeth when his bit down against the pain. Bucky was calling for him, and Steve was taking a boot to the gut from Timmy McLaughlin and Bucky wasn’t going to get there in time and why couldn’t Steve just stand up anyway. Why couldn’t Steve just breathe, why was his mom missing her shift again to pound his back with her slim fists. Where was Steve’s adrenaline? He couldn’t keep any in the house. He painted signs and drew flyers and it barely kept him in food. He would give anything he had to stand up on his own, but he was always face down in dirt and maybe he was trying to throw himself away but at some point that was just the right thing to do. Where was Steve’s adrenaline? 

Steve felt skin against his lips. Warm, live. It rubbed back and forth and Steve could almost smell the blood beneath, in that animal way the aroma of something frying could always find you when you were starving. Bucky was shaking his shoulders increasingly hard and Steve’s sluggish mind turned over the facts, remembered. He was trying to keep himself from _eating_ his best friend, the only thing he had left and the best thing he’d had ever and maybe he wasn’t ready to give anything to stand up because he was going to die here on the floor. Steve grimly pressed his lips together, smashing them closed.

Then he felt pressure on his nose, fingers pinching, sealing it shut. Steve opened his eyes, panicked. Bucky’s face appeared and disappeared as Steve tried to toss his head; Bucky’s grim expression was barely visible over the mound of his forearm. He batted at Bucky’s hands but he could hardly lift his arms. Bucky wouldn't meet his eyes, he just stared at the places he was holding Steve down. It felt like Steve had a 500 pound weight on his chest and suddenly he was six again and his lungs were filling up for the first time and he was going to drown in his own bed and that meant no momma no Bucky and no he couldn't breathe he couldn't breathe he couldn't breathe he didn't want to die this way he always knew he'd die this way he opened his mouth.

Bucky shoved his wrist deep, forcing Steve's jaws open to the point of pain. Steve’s fangs descended, stabbing into Bucky's wrist and for a horrible second his air was still cut off, Bucky's forearm sealed between his lips. Steve imagined drowning on Bucky's blood. Then Bucky freed his nose and his body was choking on the mix of air and blood, straining to get enough of each. Steve was jerking up and down weakly, trying uselessly to free himself even while his teeth clamped down harder on Bucky’s arm.

After a few seconds Steve's airway cleared and he was gulping and sucking and breathing hard through his nose. Later, Steve wouldn't be able to remember what it had tasted like; all he knew was that he was getting air and blood both and there was no difference in sweetness between them.

Steve’s mind was flooded with sensation. He was dizzy, spinning in and out of sensibility. He was on a wonder wheel; on each rotation he just barely connected with sense. He thought of _loop_ Bucky at eight or nine, still chubby cheeked and laughing with an ice cone in his hand _loop_ Bucky at fifteen sniffling outside a church dance over Tabitha Leary, wiping wet eyes with the back of his arm and letting Steve put a hand between his shoulder blades and rub _loop_ Bucky at sixteen and a half, grinning at him as they stripped down at the beach and the electric shock Steve felt when he saw Bucky running into the surf, the spray hanging in the air, turning the late morning light to diamonds _loop_ Bucky during a movie show, the flickering lights exposing flashes of Bucky’s hand as he slid it up his date’s thigh, slow; it took a whole scene until he got high enough for her to react, and then it was only to whisper something into his ear that made Bucky shove his popcorn into Steve’s hand with a hasty _we’ll meet you later_ , and _loop_ Bucky’s face slack with sleep on Steve’s green couch, Steve drawing those treacherous lips and then Steve was stumbling into his room, his cock in his hand, he could never get them right, he couldn’t focus on them, how could anyone look at them and _loop_ Steve was naked with Bucky, his mind serving up fantasy in place of memory for the final _loop_ _loop_ _loop_ Bucky was on all fours; Steve was fitting behind. Steve was inside him, they were in the middle of it. He was staring at the planes of Bucky’s back while he thrusted, and Bucky’s head was hanging low, like he was overcome. Then Steve was curling his huge new body over him, blanketing him with his unnatural heat. Bucky dropped to his elbows and groaned, and Steve was moving faster, jolting Bucky hard with the motion of his legs and hips. Finally Bucky cried out, his head thrown back like Steve had tugged on his hair, and Steve reached out with one hand to tilt his neck to the side, to sink his _loop_ _loop loop_

Steve’s brain rocketed back to full function right around the time that his muscles tightened with health. Suddenly he was disengaging, gagging on the blood in his mouth. He held Bucky’s arm, gripping the wound with one of his hands. Bucky was barely conscious. He was seated, propped up against the rock with his chin tucked onto his torso. He was staring at the ground like a drunkard. Steve tore a strip of his shirt with his teeth, and wound it tightly around Bucky’s wrist. Steve let go of his arm and Bucky fell slowly onto his back. His eyes closed and Steve yelled _Bucky, Bucky_ but he didn’t move. He goddamn didn’t move. Steve gathered Bucky up. He ducked through the exit from the small cavern with Bucky in his arms.

Steve’s eyes adjusted quickly to the darker outer chamber. He could see that most of the men were there, sitting or lying in squad groups. He located Morita in a group of the wounded, and strode over. Morita looked at Steve slack-jawed, taking in Bucky’s limp form.

“He needs plasma,” Steve grated out, already moving away from speech, flooded by the rising tide inside him.

And then he was handing Bucky over to Morita and his crew. He stood at his full height and let himself feel it: the rushing waters inside him, Bucky’s gift to him. The fresh blood was bringing his strength to an unknown height, a fever pitch. Steve could feel the potential flooding him, rocketing up his drive to _do something._ He couldn’t waste Bucky’s sacrifice.

“Cap!” someone called—Jones—and then Jones was throwing Steve's shield at him, the silly USO prop, pockmarked and bent, but unbroken. Steve plucked it out of midair as he ran. The faces of his men flew by on either side, shock blooming in their expressions, wiping away fatigue and despair. Steve dug his feet in, gathering speed and force. The wall of boulders that marked the cave in was approaching relentlessly fast. Rocks as big as cars criss-crossed the former entrance like teeth in a monster’s mouth. They were on the wrong side. Steve ran forward as fast as he could, finally taking a final leap toward the rock, tucking as much of his body behind the shield as possible. The air was still, and the moment was quiet.

He thought simply, _Bucky_ , and met.

-*-

Steve blinked in the sunlight, his heart thudding hard and his muscles still knotted with effort, even once the last stones had given way. He’d burst out of the last inches of softer earth, spraying dirt in every direction. The world was nearly incomprehensibly bright after the dim cave. Steve heard the surprised shouts of the Germans and the click of their guns cocking before his eyes could make any sense of the bleached out landscape burning into his eyes. 

He reacted on instinct, conjuring his stage voice before a deadly audience.  “LAY DOWN YOUR WEAPONS.”

The first clear sight Steve saw was nearly six hundred Nazis laying down their arms.

It was eerily quiet. Steve’s chest was still heaving; it rivaled the chill wind for the loudest sound in the landscape. The pale faces of the Nazis were turned as one toward Steve, like plants to the sun. Absurdly, Steve wondered, _what next_ , when his men answered for him. With a wordless battle cry, they stormed out of the cave behind him, spreading out immediately to permanently disarm and round up the pliant Germans as fast as they could. They were rough, knocking out more than a few as they simply stood there. Some of his men butted their rifles into arms and ribs with pitiless force, and Steve didn’t stop them. It was nasty work, but it beat opening their veins, crushing their skulls. Steve surveyed the brutality with a stony glare.

Nearly Steve’s entire contingent of mobile men had emerged by the time the Germans began to come to. It happened in stages, with the furthest away from Steve shaking their heads abruptly and then rejoining the fight with shouts of dismay. It was too late; Steve’s men had already reached nearly the outer edges of the German force, and soon Steve was fighting alongside them, his body still full of rushing blood. He tried his voice again. It didn’t work more than a few feet away, and had a diminished effect, but it was enough to destabilize those he fought.

He carved through the remaining combatants, disabling when he could, killing when he couldn’t. More than once he was hit with a spray of blood, and the tang was sickly sweet; he breathed it in and remembered the taste of Bucky between his lips. He was filled with a nameless longing, and it was like a dam had burst in his mind and body; he wanted Bucky near him with a desperate force. He landed blow after blow thinking of Bucky’s warm flesh and wry smile. The heat pervading his body intensified until he felt like he was on fire, melting through his enemies, burning and merciless like a meteor driving toward Earth.

In the end, he stood gasping in the center of a circle of downed enemies and wary allies, his chest heaving with the exertion of reigning himself in. The edges of his shield were painted with blood and other, baser viscera. His men surrounded him, all keeping a safe distance, their eyes dark and round with shock and awe. Steve knew they could see the monster that walked in Steve’s skin.

His heart rate slowed; the fiery drive that had pushed him to the edge of something terrible had ebbed. He swallowed and began to walk back to the caves. If he lived, Bucky would be waiting.

His men wordlessly parted to let him pass. He stepped over the bodies of the fallen as he went.

-*-

“You look terrible,” Bucky said. He was propped up on a couple of packs, an empty plasma bottle and tubing near him. He was eating one of the soulless MRE crackers and speaking with his mouth full. The light from the cave mouth filtered in, touching the rise of his cheekbones and the glisten of his sweat.

Suddenly Steve was back to earth, himself again, laughing through his exhaustion and his worry, laughing until he was nearly crying. He fell to his knees, grabbed Bucky’s shirt and laid his head on his chest. Then he jumped back and shook Bucky. He wasn’t gentle.

“Don’t, ever,” Steve began, and he grinned at Bucky as wide as he could. But Bucky’s eyes were focused inward, and his brow was drawing down into a frown.

“Steve, I could, I could feel you,” Bucky said, and his voice was strange.

“What?” Steve asked. His euphoria faded and unease spread through him. Bucky didn’t seem to be talking about his wound. Steve felt like he was on the USO stage for the first time, the whole audience staring at his tights and shorts.

Footsteps behind them heralded the arrival the rest of the squad leaders, and the feeling of exposure intensified. He could tell their expressions were hard from the way Bucky’s face set, with fierce eyes and a flat line for a mouth. The hairs on the back of Steve’s neck stood on end; this was a reckoning. Slowly, he stood and turned to face them.

They stood in near phalanx formation, with Dugan at the head and Morita, Jones, Falsworth and Dernier to the sides. The men surrounding them fell as quiet as a company of 400 could. The sighs of the wounded rose and fell through the air, as did a hiss of whispers. Everyone had watched Captain America burst through a wall of rock and subdue an army with a word. They’d seen him fight like a man possessed. Like an animal. Some instinct made him stand tall and square his shoulders through the choking shame he felt. He raised his chin and spoke.

“I have led this company to an unnatural victory. I stand ready for your judgement.”

He looked above their shoulders, into the darkness of the cave walls. The moment unspooled and stretched. Steve heard a grunt behind him, and then felt a hand clasp his shoulder, hard. Bucky was standing, or trying to. Steve stood straight and kept looking forward, fighting his instinct to grab Bucky and just _run_.

In his peripheral vision, Steve saw Bucky push up his left sleeve to expose the bandage on his arm. He could imagine how Bucky was staring mulishly at the men around them, and something unaligned inside him shifted a little further off center. He’d never deserved a friend like Bucky.

Before demoting him to lab rat, Phillips had proclaimed Steve _not enough_ , and now Steve knew he was both right and wrong. Steve was not enough to control himself from becoming what they’d made him. He was not enough to stop from becoming far too much.

Steve finally met Dugan’s eyes. They were unreadable; the expressive Irishman was stone-cold sober and betraying nothing. Then, slowly, Dugan reached down to pop the buttons of his left cuff. Deliberately, unmistakably, he rolled the sleeve of his shirt, turn after careful turn. A second later, Morita and Jones followed in unison. Dernier and Falsworth were next, Dernier simply pushing his loose sleeve up a slim forearm, Falsworth shrugging off his natty jacket first.

All around the room, Steve could hear the rustle of fabric. His eyes stung while his guts writhed with shame. He looked down upon the figures of his men, and their pale arms gleamed in the afternoon light, clean and smooth with youth in a way their dirty, haggard faces were no longer.

“Let’s hear it for Captain America,” Bucky shouted, his voice hoarse to Steve’s ears.

The men began to cheer.  Steve's heart sank as he understood: they wanted him to do it _again_ , they wanted him to _keep_ doing this. They would offer themselves up to keep the monster in him fighting and winning. The chorus of cheers rolled over him, gathering strength as each new man joined in. Captain America stood tall and golden while Steve Rogers despaired.

-*-

Bucky lit a cigarette. The air in the tank where they waited was already close, and the tang of the smoke curled around them both. Steve didn't want to turn around; all Steve could see at times like this were Bucky’s lips pursed around a smoke.

 “You think he’s up for this?” Steve said quietly, clearing his throat from the smoke.

Bucky said nothing, and Steve sighed. Reluctantly, Steve turned. Sure enough, Bucky’s face was unimpressed, bordering on sullen.

Bucky took a drag and released, squinting through the smoke. “You know what I think.”

“A lottery is the fairest way,” Steve asserted, as he had at least three times since the battle at the cave. Now they were three days past that, and Steve had become noticeably slower. His thoughts were still his own, but his limbs and joints ached. Steve, duty bound, had reported as much to his men. Dum Dum had suggested Steve _top up_ before they tried to ford the river, which had finally become shallow enough to attempt while carrying their wounded. Steve hated the idea, but he didn’t have a choice if he wanted to live. They’d finally gotten their hands on radios when they took the German company, and while Colonel Phillips drily congratulated them on staying alive beyond expectations, he revealed they were still nearly a week out from the base. Too far to send any help.

Bucky had again volunteered. Steve protested. Morita had agreed with Steve; no one knew the exact long term effects or risks associated with regular blood draining via human teeth, but they shouldn’t go out of their way to find out.

“Yeah, everything about this screams ‘fair’,” Bucky said.

“Fair as we can make it,” Steve gritted. They’d settled on a lottery. The drawer of the short straw was on his way.

Bucky looked at him with narrowed eyes. He knew him too well. He knew that Steve had reasons he wasn’t saying. That even Steve distinguished between omission and lies, and though he’d never lie he just might neglect to mention he was bleeding to death if he thought it was the right thing to do. Steve had relived his entire life’s worth of longing for Bucky the last time, and that unquenchable feeling had propelled him through the battle after. Once was enough.

Bucky slowly held the last stub of the cigarette to his lips, staring Steve down. Steve forced his face into neutral, held it there through the long pull Bucky took.  Neither of them blinked.

 “Cap?” a voice said from outside the tank.

At Steve’s reply, a soldier descended the ladder. His boots rang off the metal rungs. A wide torso followed strong legs. Private First Class Jones. Gabe. A man as good as the best of them, and a hell of a fighter to boot.

Jones turned, and his eyebrows rose to see them both staring at him. “You two were expecting me, right?”

Steve stood; held out a hand. “Private Jones.” Jones looked at the offered hand for a beat too long. It hung out there, absurd and overfriendly. Luckily Jones shook. Steve cleared his throat. “Gabe, _thank you_ ,” he said.

Jones shrugged. “Part of the job,” he said. “Better than getting stabbed, worse than Tootsie Rolls.”

Steve actually cracked a small smile. “You can have mine for the rest of the war.”

“Deal.”

“Go ahead and take this seat,” Steve instructed, letting his voice slide into that particular register. Gabe’s eyes narrowed slightly and then relaxed, like he was looking for an answer and found it. Steve held his gaze, it seemed important. Gabe sat at one of the control panels chairs, Steve at the other.

Bucky came over to stand behind Gabe with his hands on his shoulders. He raised his eyebrows and Steve circled his hand a little. Bucky swiveled the chair to mirror Steve; he and Gabe were nearly face to face. Steve bracketed Gabe’s knees with his and between him and Bucky they held him steady.

“Are you ready, Private?” Steve asked, and Gabe lifted his eyebrows in a hint of sarcasm even though his demeanor remained calm. Pleasant. Whatever Steve had done had made this man pleasant. He was going to drink his blood, _pleasantly._

“Just a pint,” Bucky interjected, and Steve nodded. He wouldn’t forget, but he was glad Bucky was here to help him, to keep him in line.

Steve reached down and unbuttoned the cuff of Gabe’s shirt. His fingertips brushed Gabe’s warm skin, and when he pushed back the fabric his forearm was smooth and firm. The bunch of fabric was awkward, bulky, until Bucky reached down to help him roll the sleeve past Gabe’s bicep. Steve’s hand brushed Bucky’s, and he felt a zing of desire. He shivered. He quickly looked over at Gabe’s face; he seemed drowsy, unconcerned. Like stuck in a tank with a war on was the perfect time to daydream. Steve reached out to touch two fingers to Gabe’s forehead, gently.

Steve stretched out Gabe’s arm, holding it steady with both of his hands. Funny how those hadn’t really changed with the serum. They were a little broader but still finely boned and pale, looking almost sickly against Gabe’s dark skin. These hands used to draw, they used to help things take shape from nothing. Taking things apart was always easier. Steve smoothed his thumb, his own familiar thumb, across the smooth skin in the crook of Gabe’s elbow. He felt the tiny ridges of the blood vessels, each vein thrumming with life. Steve couldn’t look at Bucky.

Captain America bent his mouth to the soft flesh and drank.

-*-

Steve shuddered through the orgasm and it was like tearing out his own lungs. The rough bark of the tree he leaned against stamped into his palm, rough and unyielding. He was hot all over, he was burning up. He was gasping like it was his first taste of air in years. He had to quiet down, he wasn’t far from the men. He was never far from them.

Steve had only made it about 200 feet from the tank. He’d staggered up the ladder, bashing his forehead on the rim of the hatch in his haste. His legs had felt jerky, uncooperative, like puppet limbs on loose strings. All he could think of was getting away from Bucky.

He hadn’t drunk too much. The only good thing was that he hadn’t been too hungry this time. He’d kept his head and listened for the thud of Gabe’s heartbeat like morse code _short long short long_ _he’s okay still okay_. After a moment, Gabe had drifted, slumping against Bucky behind him. His heartbeat was strong, and Steve was feeling settled and clear. His hands had cradled Gabe’s arm up to his mouth as he drank. The limb was still pliant and vital, Gabe’s forearm and biceps were warm against Steve’s cheeks. He’d planned to take a little more, and let him sleep it off.

Then Steve had felt Bucky’s fingers in his hair. He’d almost choked in surprise; Steve had been so focused on Gabe he’d blocked Bucky out. But Bucky’s hand was carding through his hair—he was stroking him, scratching and petting. And Steve shuddered full body and he couldn’t look up, couldn’t move, because then Bucky would stop. Steve had felt his body flush hot immediately, like turning up the gas. The moment tilted, became something different, and Steve was panting heavily through his nose, inhaling the scent of Gabe, and beyond it, Bucky. And then Bucky let out a small grunt and gripped Steve’s hair hard enough to hurt, and Steve was suddenly, painfully hard.

With a strangled noise, Steve disengaged and pushed back. He wrapped his hand around Gabe’s wound, but couldn’t look away from Bucky.

“What are you—?” he gasped. He heard the blood rushing in his own ears, in his veins and it was like a river of sound, rushing over him, drowning him. Bucky’s face was level with his. His eyes were blown dark and his full lower lip was slack. Steve was dying to fill Bucky’s mouth with his breath, curl his tongue past his teeth.

And then Bucky was reaching out with a hand toward his face, “But I want—“ he started.

“You don’t,” Steve said, helpless, and he finally found the bandage, but his hands were shaking terribly, he was nearly overcome. His cock was chafing in his pants, eager and horrible.

“Hey,” Bucky said, as if coming back from somewhere far off. “Hey, I got it.”

Bucky grabbed the bandage from Steve, wrapped it around Gabe’s arm, and tied it off. Steve had taken one last look at Bucky, his arms holding Gabe up and his hands wrapping Gabe’s wound, and fled.

Now, Steve heaved through the last shudder of orgasm. He stood bent over, propped up by his hand on the cold tree. His other hand was around his cock; it was still hard, ridiculous. He shoved it back inside his pants, pulled them up and set them to rights. He heard the scuff of boots behind him. A minute passed.

“How is Gabe?” Steve asked Bucky, because of course that was always who was standing behind him.

“Asleep, fine, he’s fine. Morita’s with him.”

Steve steeled himself and turned around. “Please don’t ever--. It’s worse when I—“ Steve gestured to himself, willing Bucky to understand.

They never talked about it. For years, Steve had tucked his desire for Bucky away, a shirt beneath a mismatched jacket; he constantly minded the cuffs, lest they slip into sight. Steve had figured Bucky knew the effort it took, appreciated his vigilance.

“It’s not that,” Bucky protested. “It just should be me.”

“It _is_ that.” Steve growled, because it seemed Steve had done his job too well. Bucky didn’t even know that _I’m not much for girls_ had always meant _I only want you_. And now blood between him and Bucky was fire in Steve’s veins—he wanted to complete the circuit, drink him and have him, both. Damn Bucky for making him spell it out. “It’s all I can _think_ about, if you do something like that!” At a loss, Steve turned, put both hands on the tree, and _pushed_. With a crack, the brittle wood snapped, and the crown of bare branches toppled.

When he turned back around, Bucky was looking at him, steady and still, all trace of nerves quieted. With a start, Steve realized that this was how Bucky got before a fight. Focused on the threat. Steve was a threat now. Bigger, hungrier and more deadly than anyone, even in the middle of a war.

“Don’t be an asshole,” Bucky warned. Steve forced himself to loosen his shoulders, and Bucky shifted to a less rigid stance.

Bucky scowled. “All right. I get it. It can’t be me. I’ll stand outside next time.”

And that was the worst of it, wasn’t it. He didn’t want Bucky there, not when the wall between what Steve wanted and what was right to take was so disturbingly thin. But Steve couldn’t think of himself. “I—I need you there. I could kill one of our men.” He trusted Bucky with more than his life; he trusted him with another man’s life at Steve’s hands.

Bucky’s mouth had a bitter twist to it. “Fine. I’ll _chaperone_.” He practically spit out the word.

Steve looked hard at Bucky. His jaw was clenched, he was clearly struggling to remain civil. "Hey," Steve said, his voice softening.

Shaking his head a little, Bucky reached out his hand to Steve’s shoulder. It landed half on his neck, the fingers solid and strange. Steve fought the urge to shudder, forced himself to look back at Bucky steadily.  He was dirty. Too thin. He’d aged more than a year since he’d left for the war. His hair was rough and curling, thick with grime where it had always been shining and slick back home.

“Thank you,” Steve said, knowing as he said it he was simply ignoring the strangeness between them, papering over a crack, as if it were fixed just because it was out of sight.

A whistle sounded up ahead. Steve looked toward the sound automatically, and when he looked back at Bucky, he was squinting off into the distance. The whistle repeated itself, then short-short. Falsworth. _Time to move_.

Something occurred to Steve. “I just knocked out our tank driver.”

“I’ll drive it until he wakes up.” Bucky’s voice was a little gravely, but the tone was even.

“You know how to drive the tank.”

Now a smile threatened at the corner of Bucky’s lips.  “Point and shoot. Same as anything else.”

**-*-**

“Steve,” Agent Peggy Carter said. “I’m going to draw my gun.”

Steve’s heart sank. He hadn’t even greeted Peggy properly when they marched into base. He’d simply said, _Peg, I need more_ , as soon as she’d gotten in earshot. Surrounded by nearly 900 men and her commanding officer, Peggy had acted like he’d just given her wonderful news, her perfectly drawn lips curving into a delighted smile.  Steve felt a stab of dread. The yawning pit of unease in his guts grew like a cancer as the minutes slipped by. Peggy could have easily palmed him a bottle at any point, but she had offered him nothing. She had simply stood by while Phillips didn’t court martial him and took studious notes during the first debrief. Her eyes watching him were hard, calculating. Steve felt sure she had noticed his two-days-past-feeding fatigue, that at any moment she would expose him for the unknowable element he was. But she’d said nothing. As the hour wore on, Steve had begun to lose hope.

She’d ambushed him outside the bathroom stalls the first second he was alone, ushering him with no small force into the shadows behind the stalls. Steve went: he trusted Peggy, even with a gun in her hands. Perhaps especially when it was pointed at him. He counted on her sanity.

Now, Steve waited for her to speak; she was in charge. Peggy’s face was almost kind. “There’s no more antidote.”

Steve had already figured as much, but it was hard. Instinct kept him on his feet; he’d learned long ago to stay standing as long as you could, even if you were cornered.

“As a precaution, you will be held in captivity until further notice. Starting right now. Hands behind your back.”

Steve complied immediately. “Turn around, walk toward the cell block.” He did. Without Peggy, Bucky would still be a POW. Steve would be eating knuckle sandwiches in back alleys, waiting for the telegrams that told him everyone he knew was dead. He waited, listening to the sound of her breathing behind him. Part of being a soldier meant following orders. Part of being a _good_ soldier meant following the _right_ orders. Peggy lived that. If Peggy thought he needed to be brought in permanently, he’d hear her out.

"Put your hands down, walk normally."

The cell block was a repurposed mine shaft; it and its once associated business offices were the only buildings for miles. Peggy entered the code at the door after nodding to the two soldiers posted there.

“We’ll head to lower level five.”

Steve walked. She followed close behind. He had no doubt she held her gun still, but when they passed their third subordinate with no more reaction than a “Sir,” and “Ma’am”, he figured she must be concealing it. As they turned down the first staircase, Peggy spoke low behind him.

Her voice was steady. “I saw Schmidt control a man once. Well, I saw him try. One of his prisoners, a man with a simple mind. Schmidt tried to make him punch a wall.” She told him how something had gone wrong with the suggestion; the man had fixated on the motion of Schmidt’s hand, but copied it with his head instead. Over and over again, the man had thrown his head forward, his eyes unseeing, his mind urging him forward and back, forward and back. Peggy had slunk away before the end, afraid of being caught in that wing of the castle off-duty. But as Schmidt’s maid, she’d been the one to clean up the mess the next morning. The bars of the prisoner’s cage had been stamped on the man’s face, creasing it in grotesque ridges where they had broken bone. Steve pictured it despite himself, and almost gagged.

They rounded the last bend. Two privates guarded this end of the corridor; they looked at him with open curiosity. Peggy slid forward, all crisp angles and clipped tones.

“Private Nichols, Private Cameron.” She filled the silence smoothly. “Captain Rogers has asked to inspect the cell block. Some of the POWs that returned with us are officers, and may be moved to this facility. I have assured him that conditions here were all according to the Geneva convention, and that we have the best security outside of London.” She smiled at that, and Steve did a double take. Peggy was deadly when she turned on the charm.

The men approved their entrance immediately; Steve didn’t even have to say anything. Steve hesitated at the threshold of a door leading to a long corridor of cells. Peggy brushed past him, apparently trusting him at her back, and led the way to a cell midway down the hall. The bricks used here were new; the building hadn’t always housed a prison. The air was dry and still, ideal for storage. Steve’s gut turned to lead at the thought of spending the rest of the war—maybe the rest of forever—in 50 square feet.

Peggy opened the door with keys from the guards. The barred door was heavy, it swung shut on Steve with a loud clang. Peggy stood outside and the bars striped her face: shadow, light, shadow, light.

“There are still a few things I need to know, Steve.” _And I don’t trust you to tell me._

Peggy’s chin was tipped up, her jaw clenched. She was acting without any true authority. Top brass might back her play, they might not. She wasn’t going to give them a chance to decide either way. She was playing judge, jury and worse if it came to that. She knew he knew it. She knew he could kill her where she stood, worse, could discredit her for Project Rebirth, for creating what had turned out to be a colossal risk. Namely, him. She was putting as much faith in him as he was in her. _We will make each other useful._

“I’ll wait for you,” Steve promised.

After she left, he sat on the lone cot and leaned against the wall. A wall he could probably punch straight through, even though he was two days past his last feeding. He closed his eyes. Absently, his fingers brushed against the bricks. Their edges were sharp and new; their grit tugged at his fingertips. They’d had a cat, back in Brooklyn. He and Bucky had had a cat. She’d stayed at Steve’s ma’s place mostly, well, near it. She only came inside on the coldest days. She loved the fire escape, where a stray brick jutted out right at back scratching height. The sun warmed the fire escape, its light falling through a slot in the buildings. She’d curl up on the metal grating and bake, like a furry loaf of bread.  On afternoons off Bucky’d come to his house and bake with her, a library book or penny comic lolling from his fingers, his hat over his eyes. Sometimes Steve snuck off the hat and drew Bucky asleep. He learned to really draw fabric by studying the crinkles of Bucky’s trousers where his knees crossed, or the starburst folds near his bent elbows. The tricky bones of the hand made sense when he saw them inside Bucky’s familiar fingers. The ridges of his skull shaded his eyes, making the outline of the sockets clear above the rise of his cheekbones. Steve felt sure he could pick out Bucky’s skeleton; he knew the contours of his bones so well.

Steve felt a stirring of desire and cursed softly. Even here with his head on the chopping block he wanted Bucky. Thinking about Bucky’s _bones_ had been enough. At least Bucky had listened to him. He didn’t ever touch him during feedings, and it worked, they were OK. As long as Steve kept his mind on the task at hand, it worked. But like a pendulum swung hard one way, when he wasn’t feeding, his mind swung back to Bucky. Sparing him from those few charged moments made Steve want him more all the rest of the time. His desire stalked him everywhere, never more than a footstep behind him. He dreaded it; beyond anything else, it served to highlight his miserable situation.  He buttoned it up; persevered. There was a war on.

“Steve?” Peggy had returned.

“Yes.” She favored him with a brief smile. “At Sergeant Barnes’ insistence, I talked to your lead men. In particular, I spoke with Dum Dum, Dernier, and Jones.” His three feedings, beyond Bucky. “Their testimonies were very informative.”

Steve reddened with shame, even as relief warred with dread; some small, human part of him had hoped that she was going to stop him: shoot him if that what it took. But he could tell by her face she wasn't. He grabbed a hold of the bars of the cell, reflexively, as if he could stop the words coming.

“I’m going to clear you for duty.” She was going to make him keep feeding. This hell would go on, and on.

“I’m dangerous,” he said softly, because he couldn’t say, _I’m terrified._ He couldn’t say, _It’s killing me._

Peggy narrowed her eyes. “Have you seen those guns that Hydra has? The ones that shoot blue energy.” Of course he had. “What happens to men hit by their blasts?”

Steve swallowed. “They are obliterated.”

“In an unholy fire that leaves nothing behind.” She cocked her head slightly. “And if you could use them against Hydra, would you?”

“I already have.”

“I see.” Peggy opened the door of the cage. The keys jangled loudly, a bright, sharp sound in the silence of the hallway. She lay a clean uniform on the edge of the bunk. “It’s 1600. Colonel Phillips will expect you to have your team committed by tomorrow morning. Take a few hours to think about it, if you must.”

Steve followed her out of the lower level, so jammed up in his own thoughts that his legs felt numb, like he was floating through a nightmare. There was really only one way out of this, and that was through. Love unrequited. Fight and capture the enemy. Kill. Be resurrected every three days by the blood of his men, to start the process over again. Hope to live, so his men could live. Hope to die, so he could be free. Steve stared down the barrel of his future and was sickened to his core.

Bucky was waiting for them right outside the cell block. His eyes were wide with concern, although he said nothing.

“Sergeant.” She gave Bucky a nod, and he returned it. Relief relaxed his features.

Peggy turned toward Steve. He had put on the uniform she gave him. She tugged at it, now. Smoothed her hands on his shoulders, adjusted his SSR pin. “There’s no giving it back, darling,” she said sadly.  Then she raised up on tip-toe and kissed his cheek.

The moonlight highlighted her strong silhouette as she walked back to headquarters.

-*-

Steve stared into their faces. Falsworth, sitting straight in his chair with an expression near distaste. Dernier and Jones, sitting close enough to mutter to each other in French, their shoulders tilted together in a V. Dum Dum, looking both more amused and drunker than he probably was. Morita, likely just as drunk as he looked. Bucky. Bucky was acting strange. He had a smile for the others, but his eyes when he caught Steve’s were speculative. Bucky’s wrist rested on the table. The small wound Steve had made was gone, although some bruising still clouded the skin. Bucky kept his wrist in plain sight all evening. Steve felt the subtle challenge of it; it unsettled him.

They were in a back room at the bar and hotel in Azzano, an hour away from the base. Business was booming: it seemed to be one of only three places open in the whole city. They were a world away from everything Steve had known, even six months ago. Hell, three and a half weeks ago, he’d been schilling war bonds and dodging tomatoes. Then two hours ago, he’d been a prisoner in a mine shaft. Ten minutes ago, he'd gathered together the men who were closest to his heart and he’d given the speech of his life. He’d drummed up every ounce of his courage and conviction and laid it all on the line. They were soldiers. They were the best. They could make a real dent in Hydra's forces, win back their dignity and free their countrymen from siege. They could stand up to the bullies of the world, together. Steve spoke from his heart, shedding the Captain America layer and speaking humbly before them. They were the best words he’d ever said.

Now, Steve waited. Everything hinged on how these men responded.

Morita belched into the silence.

Dum Dum spoke. “So you want us to go back out there? _Tomorrow_?”

Steve flushed so fast it was almost painful. It was Bucky who spoke, leaning back in his chair, hands behind his head in a parody of nonchalance. “That’s the idea.”

Steve recovered. “You can say no.”  Then, _maybe they can’t_. He cleared his throat; his next words were spoken by Captain America. “You can refuse.”

Dum Dum looked around the table. As second in command, he was used to speaking for the men. “Does anyone want to be a human snack on the regular for the privilege of following a chorus girl into a war zone?”

“Nope,” said Morita.

“Not at all,” said Falsworth.

“You’d have to be crazy,” Jones said, but he was smiling.

They’d all cracked smiles by the time Dernier cut in with _Ce serait fou._

Bucky was last. “Only if you keep the outfit.”

Dum Dum turned to Steve. “There you have it. We’re in.”

Steve shook his head, awash in relief and guilt. His men could have had a furlough, maybe even a reassignment. But they’d charge back into the war with him instead. He let his breath out in a strained chuckle. “Thank you,” he said. He raised his glass high. The amber liquid looked warm; it caught the light. “To the 107th.” The group cheered, loud and long.

Bucky stood up to get everyone another round on Cap. Steve watched him leave, his eyes automatically skimming over his backside, not too long. Not too obvious.  Just like every other time.

Steve looked at the already well-known faces of the men around him. Capable, brave as hell, and, tonight—utterly devoted to their liquor. Steve let the mood wash over him as the talk got slower, louder and more slurred.

Dum Dum and Morita began a joke contest—“if we kill him they’ll replace him with somebody who really knows how to shoot,”—and Steve’s thoughts drifted to Peggy, and the promise she’d gotten Phillips to make to him right before he came to the city. Bucky was not going to like it. It didn’t matter if he didn’t. It was the right thing to do.

Morita raised his voice for the contest-ending punchline: “you’ve thrown the wrong bitch out of the train!” and the men’s shouts of laughter brought Steve back to the moment. 

Just then, the waitress, not Bucky, returned with the drinks.

-*-

Bucky was face down on the bed when Steve made it back to the room they’d be sharing. Good. He’d been hoping to have a minute or two alone to think, to compose his pitch to Bucky. Maybe he could duck out for a short bath. He sweated more now, he ran so hot. Out in the field he barely noticed—no man smelled like a daisy on the front. But here there were still baths, still clothes irons.

Steve was trying to take off his shoes in complete silence when Bucky rolled over slowly. “’M not asleep.”

“Evidently,” Steve said, smiling crookedly. Bucky was rumpled, his hair flat on one side and his shirt a wreck. He’d been lying where he’d fallen, apparently.

Steve shut the door and kicked Bucky’s feet where they hung off the bed. Bucky laid his hands on his chest, fingers interlaced. He seemed at ease, almost sloppy. Steve noticed a bottle on the bedside table.

“Did you _steal_ that?” Steve asked, with a measure of admiration and jealousy. Some nights he wished powerfully for a drink that could dull his own edges, make him careless. But he’d probably sober up with his mouth around someone’s throat.

Bucky shrugged, and gave him the cocky grin he usually reserved for dames. Steve rolled his eyes.

“I knew the guys would say yes. Those idiots.” Bucky’s face was fond.

Steve turned away, fumbling with the buttons on his dress shirt. He sighed, and the moment became serious. “I want to put it all down,” Steve admitted.

“You won’t. You’ll do it,” Bucky said, and Steve heard an odd note in his tone. Warily, Steve took off his shirt. Bucky was not a predictable drunk. The air in the room was cold when it hit his damp chest. Steve decided to chance it. Drunk or not, Bucky was gonna hear him out.

“You can, though.” Steve said, then hurriedly explained: “I told Phillips my condition for leading the Commandos was your reassignment. Back to New York.”

Bucky didn’t waste time being surprised. He stood, furious. “You little shit! No. That’s it, no.”

“Bucky,” Steve started.

“Forget it, Steve.”

“I won’t. All I ever wanted was to stand on my own. But I every day of my life, I took too much. From my mom. Now from the men. You. I can’t do it.”

Bucky laughed in his face, a harsh, hurting sound. “You moron.”

“Say that again,” Steve said, because who was Bucky to tell him what he should want?

“Oh, I will,” Bucky retorted. Intensity welled from his eyes but his mouth was set like a tease. Like Steve shouldn’t start shit with the biggest bully on the block. Steve should know better. And then Bucky stood on the balls of his feet and kissed him.

“Hey!” Steve backed off fast and pushed Bucky away. Bucky, his legs leadened by drink, stumbled backward and fell, sitting down hard on the floor.

“No wonder you never get laid, Stevie.” Bucky said it lightly, almost to himself. He had bit his lip on the way; a small splotch of blood reddened his lower lip like rouge. Steve’s body flared with lust and hunger.

“What are you doing?” Steve asked, suddenly afraid.

“I’m ready now. I wasn’t before; it took me a while.” Bucky worried at his lip with his teeth, Christ, it was bleeding more now. Steve was three days past his last feeding, something Bucky had been keeping track of even more closely than he had. Steve suddenly felt his mouth go dry—he was parched like he hadn’t been since he’d tried to lick Debbie’s tears.

“I saw us,” Bucky continued, “when you drank me. It was—it was like I was you, I could feel what you wanted. I felt you—we were.” Bucky slowed the next word, his teeth scraping over his bleeding lip, pulling in and releasing it with the sound. “Fucking.”

Steve stared, poleaxed. He felt frozen stiff, like he was suddenly made of cheap plaster, and Bucky was swinging a bat. In a flash of desire, he remembered his fantasy from before—Bucky’s head bent low, then arching back in pleasure. He was caught out, shocked silent.

Bucky shifted to his knees. Steve’s brain was a skipping record, stuttering over the sight of the tendons in Bucky’s neck, the stretch of his dress shirt over his broad shoulders, the splay of his thighs as he sat back on his knees. He’d starve at Bucky’s feet before he found a lesser man to love. But it was Bucky who was kneeling.

“And I _wanted_ it.” Slowly, deliberately, Bucky tilted his head to the side. “Make me want it again.”

“I can’t,” Steve whispered, his dry throat choking his words. “I’ll take _everything_.”

“I know.”

Steve broke. He rushed Bucky, shoving his hands under his armpits and lifting him bodily back onto the bed. Bucky’s head landed hard on the mattress, his neck stretching back even further. Steve caught a glimpse of his feral smile before he pinned Bucky with his body and lowered his mouth to Bucky’s neck.

Steve’s fangs shot out as soon as his lips closed around Bucky’s warm, slightly sweaty skin. Bucky sucked in a quick breath of pain, and Steve thought, _I love you, I love you so much_ as hard as he could.

“Oh,” Bucky said. “ _Oh_ ,” and then the blood began to flow. The taste was unimaginably good, rich like Gabe’s or Dum Dum’s but with a metallic bite and a lingering sweetness. Better yet was the way he and Bucky were tangled; Bucky had hooked an ankle around one of Steve’s feet, still planted on the ground. He had most of Bucky’s chest pinned; Bucky’s rumpled shirt pressed into creases against Steve’s bare chest. Still, Bucky was restless, like his body needed to move in response to the feeling of being drunk from. Steve felt him rock as he hitched a leg up onto the bed, then let it fall back down. Bucky’s left arm waved in an aimless circle from the elbow until Steve grabbed it with his one, interlacing their fingers. Bucky squeezed his hand, and Steve reveled in the sweet strength of it; he’d dreamed of holding hands with Bucky more than he’d thought of fuck—

He was going to fuck him. Steve was going to roll him over, strip him down, and take him. A brutally clear image assaulted him, collaged from Steve’s few overheard bathhouse tales and the darker corners of his mind: Bucky nearly passed out from blood loss, face down over the side of the bed while Steve drove into him. His arms and head would be slack and purposeless. Like Karin’s German deserter. Like a corpse. _What am I doing?_   With a strangled sound, Steve pulled off Bucky’s throat, slapping his hand against the wound. Horrified, he looked down at Bucky’s half lidded eyes and curved lips and they were still, too still, and for a moment he thought—

“Are you gonna take your pants off now?” Bucky slurred, stirring from whatever zone he’d been floating in, somewhere between the whiskey and the bleeding, if Steve had to guess.

Carefully, Steve moved to the side, off Bucky, keeping pressure on his neck. The movement jostled his stiff dick, and he couldn’t stop himself from looking at it like a school boy caught with his hand in his pants. The tip was jutting above his trouser waist, a ridiculous intruder. Steve was trapped—move away and Bucky would bleed. Move forward, and Bucky would—

Bucky chose for him, sitting up and switching their places so fast that Steve was on his back before he realized.

“You,” Bucky growled, “are impossible.” And then he was on top of Steve, rubbing their hips together roughly, shifting above Steve in long, hard strokes. The smell of Bucky’s blood hit the air and Steve was sucked back under the tide of his desire. Bucky was alive, they both were alive and here, and it was impossible but it had happened. Bucky had hung on for Steve, they hung on for each other. Steve moved his hand back to Bucky’s neck, his fingers clamping around it as Bucky thrust above him. The hollow of Steve’s thumb bridged the rise of his windpipe; his fingers dug into the flesh of Bucky’s neck muscles. Bucky moaned a little as Steve tightened his grip, and Steve echoed him helplessly.

Bucky grabbed hungrily at Steve’s bare chest, one hand cupping and massaging Steve’s pecs, and Steve knew a moment of disorientation— _they’re not tits, Buck_ —until Bucky started roughly thumbing his right nipple, and Steve groaned because damn, maybe they kind of were. Then Bucky was gripping his shoulder, pushing down hard, and the stretch of Steve’s muscles was almost painful as he took the bulk of Bucky’s weight. The burn felt right—Steve had spent years where his body was more in pain than out of it. Bucky’s movements were taking him to the edge, the heat of their bodies and the friction of their clothes between them scouring Steve raw, laying bare his very nerves.

“I’m gonna—“ Steve said.

“You’d better,” Bucky gasped, and then Bucky was groaning through his own orgasm, the wetness seeping from out of the top of his pants. Steve had one perfect image of Bucky above him, his face twisted in pleasure, Steve’s hand still at his throat, keeping him from bleeding, keeping him near, and Steve was shot through with the pain of his love.

Steve came, gasping in shuddering breaths, _ah, ah_ like he’d been the one half strangled, like his lungs barely worked.

He came back to himself when Bucky flopped down on the bed next to him. He reached vaguely for him, worried that Bucky would still be bleeding. Bucky batted his hand away lazily, put his own hand up to his neck. Steve lay there, his mind as empty as it had ever been. It felt amazing. Beside him, Bucky yawned hugely and gave a full view of his teeth, like a lion. Steve giggled, a high, embarrassing sound. Bucky said nothing, just looked at Steve with a smug expression.

Steve felt too good to say what he had to say. All the more reason to say it. “Please think about going home. I came up here to beg you to.”

Bucky looked at him quietly. They were lying on their sides, facing each other, eye to eye. The moment hung between them, laden with meaning. Bucky was free; Steve couldn’t be free of him, but Bucky could walk away.

“New York's gone, Steve. It’s just you and me.” Bucky’s eyes were still and calm, like he was saying something as obvious as it was truthful. _War is terrible. Love is good. It’s just you and me._

Steve had to look away; he studied the ceiling, with its hairline fractures and faded, yellowing paint. It had seen better days, but it was holding. Around the room’s one light an artist had painted a starburst enclosed by a repeating pattern of circles. Steve gathered himself, his eyes tracing the curves of the design.

Bucky broke the moment; he rolled over and grabbed the tiny mirror off the bedside table and inspected the two small red wounds on his neck. They had clotted already. He grinned at his reflection and then rolled back to face Steve.

“Let’s do that again,” Bucky said. “This time without our clothes.”

“Bucky—“ Steve started, and then “ow,” when Bucky smacked him upside the head.

“Fire up the brain waves,” Bucky ordered cheerfully, and then he surged forward and kissed him deeply. They hadn’t done that the first time. It was wonderful, Bucky’s lips fitted to his and his tongue curling through Steve’s mouth. Steve’s shoved his arm under Bucky and muscled him closer. His other hand  gripped Bucky’s ribs, slotting his fingers in the hollows between them.

“You,” Steve pulled away for a second, and he lost his train of thought when Bucky began nuzzling him, Bucky’s four day stubble scratching deliciously against Steve’s neck. “Hardly seem to need my brains,” Steve protested.

“Thank god, there aren’t enough to spare,” Bucky rejoined, and when Steve grabbed Bucky’s jaw to kiss him Bucky complied, his mouth opening for Steve. Steve felt his desire rising, inexorable, always just below the surface of everything he was now. He shared it as best he could, offering it forward with his thoughts. _You are so beautiful._

It was even better without their clothes.

Later, Steve was falling into a nap when he felt Bucky’s hand lightly scratching the sensitive skin of his belly. He thought, in that drifting aimless way that precedes sleep, of that gray cat on the fire escape. Steve curled on his side and slept.

-*-

“Remember when I made you ride the Cyclone at Coney Island?” Bucky asked. 

Truthfully, Steve had been thinking about the blow jobs they’d traded two weeks ago. It was the first time they’d done it, and they’d both been wonderfully terrible at it. They took turns, snickering and teasing and trying different approaches.

“The time I threw up?”

“This isn’t payback is it?”

“Nah, you’ll know payback when you feel it.”

“That a promise?” And they weren’t really making sense, or even being funny, but Bucky grinned wide, his teeth white and gleaming even in the snow storm.

The Commandos were closer than ever. Bucky, mollified by Steve’s particular attention in off-duty moments, was satisfied to play sheriff during Steve’s continued feedings. Steve couldn’t be sure those  moments had any real effect on their teamwork, but the Commandos seemed to move as a single man sometimes, each finger drawing seamlessly into a fist to smash through their mission objectives.

Quiet moments were scarce, but Steve knew the pleasure of Jones’ rich baritone singing “Lili Marlene” into the echoes of a starlit night, of the rapid-fire insults that peppered Morita and Dum Dum’s fierce poker games, of French lessons from Dernier and boxing lessons from Falsworth. And his time with Bucky—well. Steve prayed first thing every morning, asking God’s forgiveness for finding joy in the middle of a war.

Steve’s feet hit the train, and the mission was on.

It was a disaster from the minute the doors closed between him and Bucky.  Previous missions had worked almost like magic; Steve had calibrated the range of his abilities and the Commandos had knocked down targets as fast as Phillips assigned them. They’d never lost a man—hell, even their injuries had been minor. Half the guys they attacked surrendered almost immediately, the rest fought to the death, but so poorly it was more like target practice than real fighting. It wasn’t natural, but Bucky would just shrug and give him a variant of an _ends, means, who cares?_ speech every time Steve broached the topic.  The last time Steve brought it up, Bucky had leaned in close and reminded him of the best things his mind powers could do.

“I don’t think my _mind powers_ have much effect on you anymore,” Steve had said, as Bucky had gripped his ass through his pants. “I’m thinking about your grandma right now, for example.”

“Fuck you, Rogers,” Bucky had groaned as he stepped back and pushed Steve away. Steve was filled with euphoria; he was right. He knew he was right. Steve had smiled for a whole hour after that, until Dum Dum told him it was downright creepy being so chipper when the last of their booze had run out the day before.

The chagrin Steve might have felt— _should_ have felt—about drawing everyone closer to him unnaturally paled in comparison to the good it was doing. Maybe Steve had caught some of Bucky’s view of the world in return for what Steve gave him.

Now, Steve was finding out the hard way that Zola’s guards had finally wised up. The men threatening Bucky had elaborate headsets on. Steve hurled thoughts of incompetence at them anyway while he fought for his life against the actual goddamn _robot_ they’d sent after Captain America. Steve could feel Bucky’s intense concentration, his focus. _Blam blam blam_ , Steve could hear Bucky’s gunshots from the other train car. From the diminished return fire, Bucky had downed a couple of men. Steve estimated Bucky’s remaining bullets each time a blast of shots rang out, focusing on the dwindling numbers even as he dodged another of those blue-fire blasts from the robot’s gun. Maybe _10_ , then _6_ , then _3_ , and then _shit, fuck._ Steve thought _I’m coming_ and downed the robot with a blast from its own gun. He raced over to the door, thumbed it open and tossed Bucky his gun. Brain waves didn’t work on the last standing enemy, but he and Bucky working in sync did: the assailant dodged the crate Steve kicked toward him straight into a bullet from Bucky.

Then the actual goddamn robot was back and Steve was throwing up a shield between the blue fire and Bucky, suddenly desperate. Steve was flung across the train car; he crashed into the wall, sense and breath gone from him. Dimly, he felt his own pain, but it was not enough to tether him to consciousness. He was fading. He was going to fail, and Bucky, Bucky was going to—Steve looked up, fuzzily, to see Bucky standing guard between Steve and the robot. Time slowed for Steve as tried to wrestle his brain back toward the present moment. Bucky was carrying Steve’s shield and shooting useless bullets at an unbeatable enemy. He was standing in front of a massive hole in the side of the train, and the wind whipping through the car stirred his hair and clothes into baroque twists. The light from the snowy landscape beyond outlined his bold figure, he was thrown into shade, a dark form against a field of racing white.

But Bucky wasn’t alone. The crumpled form of the man Bucky had shot leapt up from the ground just as Steve heard the whine of the robot’s gun reloading.

Time whirred back to life and Steve staggered to his feet. _Bucky!_ Steve cried, mind to mind, but it was too late. Bucky didn’t see the man approaching behind him, so fast, too fast. Bucky was turning around just as the man reached out—he merely had to reach out—and so he was looking square at Steve when the man pushed him out of the train and into the nothing beyond.

Steve was already in motion, he was running, jumping, nearly flying toward the man. He hit him in a full body tackle right at the crescendo of the robot’s gun, and Steve’s feet felt the sizzle of energy as he arced out of the train to fall with Bucky’s murderer into the chasm below.

-*-

Steve staggered forward through the thickly falling snow. His right leg and left arms were useless still, despite the fresh blood that pumped through Steve’s veins. He limped along, leaning on a small tree he’d pulled up, roots and all.

The man who’d killed Bucky was dead of a broken everything the instant they hit the ground, but he had still had most of his blood—apparently Hydra had also distributed bullet proof vests in the latest round of upgrades. Steve had drunk unceremoniously, blocking out the excruciating pain in his limbs with one last thought: heal enough to find Bucky and lie down beside him. The blood was almost too rich—Steve was used to meals, not a feast—but he had choked it down. Bucky could take a long time to find.

The snow that had saved his life was his enemy now. The powder was thick, shifting mercilessly beneath his bad leg. Soon the tangle of roots at the bottom of his makeshift cane had gathered a snowpack; it became heavier and heavier. The blizzard had only gotten worse. The wind rocketed down the canyon, blasting blinding sheets of snow into Steve’s eyes, pushing him back. Steve wasn’t even sure he was going the right way—he’d tumbled once (leg) and twice (arm) before coming to land. The wind seemed like it was going the right way, but Steve could have misremembered. Steve could have--

Bucky lay sprawled in a snowdrift ten feet away. Steve stopped, dumbstruck. Bucky’s right leg was twisted unnaturally at the ankle, and a smear of red stained the snow near Bucky’s left arm. Bucky’s eyes were closed and sunken, his face purpling from a cacophony of bruises. Steve’s heart twisted up. It crumpled in his chest like a sugar cube in coffee.

And then Steve noticed the tourniquet. Bucky’s belt had been looped around his left arm, near the shoulder, and tied off clumsily. Steve rushed forward, stumbling, _I’m here, I’m here_ , and landed at Bucky’s feet. Bucky was _breathing_.

Steve lifted his good hand to Bucky’s cheek. It was burning up. Steve didn’t know much about full body trauma other that what he’d learned in the war—other than what he was _experiencing right now_ —but that didn’t seem to fit. Maybe Bucky had internal injuries that were playing havoc with his system. Well of course he did. Bucky wasn’t going to walk away from this. Neither of them were.

Steve couldn’t save Bucky, but he could ease his way. Painfully, haltingly, Steve shifted until he was lying side by side with him. He huddled closer, _I’m here, I’m here_ , and he lay his head down in the snow.

He turned his face toward Bucky and thought warm thoughts. It was stupid, but it was all he could think to do. _Whiskey_ , he thought, _straight out of a bottle_. _My fire escape on a sunny afternoon_. _Coney Island boardwalk under bare feet in August._ _Our tent, folded in each other’s arms. Your mouth, on mine._

“Steve,” Bucky said. It was hardly more than a breath. Steve stared at Bucky’s lips, urging them to move again, when Bucky smiled. No, he wasn’t smiling, it was pain, he was baring his teeth in a grimace of--Steve’s breath caught. Two slim fangs had emerged from Bucky’s upper gum. He was opening and closing his mouth, insensible, lips parting and meeting again as if checking to see if the new sensation would diminish.

Somehow, Bucky had become like him. Steve’s tired, pain-filled mind flitted over possibilities--Hydra had given him some version of the serum; Steve’s horrible state was somehow _catching_ —before he realized the obvious. If Bucky was like him, Steve _could_ give him something more.

Carefully, Steve reached his hand out to Bucky’s mouth. Steve allowed himself a small moment to stroke the curves of his lips with his index finger, first the top, then the bottom lip. Then he turned his hand over and offered Bucky his wrist.

 _Bucky_ , Steve begged. _Take everything._

And Bucky set his mouth on him and drank.

-*-

 

 

 **Epilogue**

Steve awoke, slitting his eyes to see through his lashes. Flashes of memory came back to him. He and Bucky, tangled together in the snow, nearly passed out with pain. Rough hands grabbing them, _collecting_ them, and then the sweet drip of morphine and oblivion.  

Later, dark, featureless halls, the kind Hydra bunkers usually had. Shapes of doctors and once, a grim looking nurse, swimming in a hazy sea around them, muttering in German. Surprise at his being awake. The pinprick of needles. More drugs.

Now, no medical personnel were around. Steve lay in a recovery room in some kind of medical clinic. He was strapped down, of course, but not nearly well enough to be a problem on a good day. They’d even propped him up in a mostly sitting position. He kept his eyes mostly closed; they could have cameras or two way mirrors. He thought the vague rodlike shape to his right was an IV drip. Must just be sugar water. Plasma sure as hell just made everything worse.

He’d started to drift a little—the drugs were fading, but not completely gone—when the door opened and a small staff wheeled _Bucky_ in. Steve fought to stay “sleeping” while they adjusted his straps, annotated some chart, started Bucky on his own sugar water drip, and left.

 _Steve_ , Bucky said in Steve's mind, just as Steve said _Bucky._ Steve fought back a smile. The mind powers went both ways, now. 

 _Hydra are a bunch of sadistic bastards but they know their tech. They gave me a new arm. It’s incredible. I can punch through_ walls _._

 _Is that a promise?_ Steve really was going to smile now, because Hydra had bitten off way more than they could chew this time.

 _Yeah_ , Bucky thought. _It’s a promise._

Captain America opened his eyes.

 

 

END

 

 

-*-

 If you liked the story, [consider a reblog on Tumblr!](http://counteragentfilms.tumblr.com/post/125368958707/red-white-blue-by-counteragent-for-monicawoe) :)

**Author's Note:**

> This story owes sooooo much to Speranza, without whom it would honestly be quite horrible. THANK YOU, HON!!! 
> 
> And, of course, it also owes its existence to my darling monicawoe, for whom it was written. I hope you like it, dear. <3


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